Reflections on Jamaica

by Pauline Valvo, Project Director at A Pass Educational Group

Working as a Project Director, I sometimes feel pretty removed from the field of education that captured my passion as a young adult. My first teaching job was helping inner-city youth in Chicago obtain their GEDs post-incarceration. Watching the spark of understanding flash across their faces, witnessing their pride upon graduation, mentoring them through their first jobs, and helping some of them move out of the projects to build meaningful lives was incredibly rewarding. I eventually transitioned from teaching to writing curriculum, editing, managing teams of writers and editors, and most recently to a director role. Instead of spending my days actively engaged with motivated students, now I sit in front of a computer, replying to emails, reviewing contracts, processing invoices, and ensuring deliverables are completed by their deadlines. At times, I can forget that I’m working in the education field I care so much about.

Recently, I had the privilege of spending a week in Jamaica. I taught a couple of workshops on the topics of communication and community building skills. In addition, I visited some local schools, where I had the opportunity to interact with the children and talk with the teachers. Students worked at wobbly, beaten up old wooden desks and shared dog eared textbooks, and they were proud to show me their pencils and cherished notebooks. The teachers had minimal supplies to work with, no or little computer access, and shared that they often run out of chalk to use on their faded green chalkboards. The buildings are open air and sometimes don’t have electricity. The playlot at the elementary school I visited contained only a broken swing set and tattered seesaw and was bound by barbed wire. The soccer ball I donated was a huge hit, and we engaged in a lively game of “football” during their outdoor time.

Students were dressed in pristine uniforms, polite, well-spoken, and engaging. They shared with me their dreams of being farmers, dancers, lawyers, and the older students talked of going to college in the States. The teachers were thrilled to receive donations of supplies and proud to show us what they were working on. I was surprised to learn how important standardized tests are there, and that students are tracked based on how they perform in sixth grade. The tests they use in Jamaica are based on tests used here in the United States, as many students apply to college in the US.

I was inspired and reminded of why I chose to become an educator. One of my favorite quotes came to mind, by Maimonides: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” This is especially important in impoverished communities or countries. Education has the power to transform lives and cultures. What we create here in the United States impacts so many people’s lives.

Today as I worked with my spreadsheets, number crunching and revising schedules, I saw the faces of the school children and teachers in Jamaica working to pursue dreams. I thought about the hungry, dyslexic kid from inner-city Chicago trying to reason out a math question on a standardized test and the teacher whose job hangs in the balance based on test scores. I thought about the single mother who took out a loan so she could take night classes at a community college and the instructors who immigrated to the US and work three jobs to support their families.  

So I’m even more committed to being part of an organization that creates quality, accessible educational materials that help educators do their jobs more effectively and efficiently. I feel honored to contribute in the ways I do, to support teams of content experts, writers, and editors, knowing that the work we do individually and collectively has the power to positively affect thousands of people’s lives. Who can resist being inspired by the purity, innocence, and unbridled possibility that shines through this photo of Lashelle?

It’s Not the Tests, It’s the Teaching

by Anne Wujcik, Educational Research Analyst, MDR

There’s good news and bad news this week. The field testing of the new Common Core assessments from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) appears to be going fairly smoothly. The bad news is that we’re still talking about testing, and I apologize for that. 

To say that things went fairly well is not to say there haven’t been problems, but there are no reports of massive failures or, for that matter, of sobbing students. It seems like teachers and students got the message that this is a test of the test, not of the students themselves or of their teachers. As for glitches and even outright failures, that’s what a field test is all about. In addition to vetting test items for validity and reliability, the field test provides an opportunity to identify weaknesses in the infrastructure.

The bad news is that these tests, for all their newness and attempt to be better measures of things that really matter, have come to command so much attention. When the testing consortia were first launched with the promise of tests that would assess more meaningfully and deeply students’ concept mastery, I was a fan. I’ve become more and more skeptical along the way. One of the problems under No Child Left Behind’s accountability system was that test scores were used to beat up schools, which resulted in a real narrowing of curriculum as more and more emphasis was placed on ensuring that students were ready for the year-end tests. I had hoped that new assessments, aligned more tightly to the Common Core standards that students would be expected to master and using new, more innovative item design, would limit classroom time devoted to test prep. Instead teaching to the standards would become the norm and teachers would be freed to innovate and engage in more in-depth exploration of concepts.

But we can’t seem to get our politics and our pedagogy in balance. While ESEA waivers seem to have solved the worst of the “failing” schools problem, the administration substituted a new stumbling block in its demand that student test scores count significantly in the teacher evaluation systems the states are rolling out. Who demanded that we implement a transformational set of learning standards, launch new technology-based assessments that challenged existing infrastructure, and then tied teacher evaluation (and pay and retention) to scores on those new tests all within a five year time period? It’s no wonder the states are making adjustments, pushing back the dates at which test scores count for both teachers and students. I’m not against accountability, but the question is what are we trying to do here – gather data that will help improve teaching and learning or go back to using that data punitively? Yes, test scores should matter. But it’s the teaching and learning that are central.

In the end, though we are currently arguing about the Common Core, testing, local control and student data privacy, it’s really all about transforming our schools to meet the needs of the 21st century. We have to shift from lecturing and listening to creating and exploring. The Common Core and other rigorous college- and career-ready standards, while not perfect, are a start and we have to find ways to support teachers and schools as they move forward. We need to celebrate educators’ embrace of STEAM (the "A" represents the addition of the arts to the traditional STEM disciplines), defend their experimentation with project-based learning, and clamor for more integrated, cross-curricular approaches to lessons.

If we want to see our schools maintain the more well-rounded approach that we all know is central to turning out not just college- and career-ready students but students who are prepared to thrive in an increasingly diverse and complex society, we all need to support the major shifts in the way in which teachers deliver the curriculum and the increased demand on students to take responsibility for their own learning. Parents need to understand that their children may have to work a bit longer and harder. Teachers have to resist the pressures, wherever they’re coming from, to once again narrow the curriculum and rein in innovation. Local and state education leaders have to be prepared to explain the benefits of more rigorous instruction and calm the fears generated by one set of test scores. Policy makers have to give the Common Core time to gel and grow roots. And we all have to begin a reasoned dialog about what we want for our students and how we are going to achieve that - a dialog we never seem to get around to in any meaningful way. And without a common vision, it’s hard to move forward.

What's Problem Solving Got to Do With It?

By Bill Kring, Mathematics Classroom Instructor and A Pass Educational Group Associate

When I was a child, my dad would give me problems to solve on our fishing trips. I would hunker down in the back window of our old Hudson and try to figure out what the answer was to the challenge he had given me. I thought for a long time I had been given a truly thoughtful father! I found out much later that he was using that strategy just to keep me quiet while he was driving us to the fishing spot. However, what it spawned was a joy and desire to challenge my mind to solve problems.

When I started teaching, problem solving often meant the word problems in the book. I didn’t see the connection between learning mathematics and the joy I found solving problems. It wasn't until the mid 1980s, after teaching for more than 15 years, that I had my eyes and heart opened to the power of teaching through problem solving. I had been the "Sage on the Stage" during the early part of my career, honing my skill as a presenter of mathematics. Most of my students were successful in learning what I had shown them, but there were some who had never made it to the level of learning I wanted for them. Fortunately, I had my style turned upside down through some training in how to use problem solving in the classroom.

So, what is this Problem Solving anyway?

In How To Solve It, George Polya proposed that problem solving could be taught as an art, an act of discovery, and encouraged presenting mathematics as an experimental and inductive science. This view of problem solving develops students’ abilities to become skillful and enthusiastic problem solvers, independent thinkers who are capable of dealing with open-ended problems. My dad had started me on this path, and I have followed it for most of my life.

Often, problem solving skills are taught as a separate topic in the curriculum. Teachers show students a set of general procedures for solving problems—drawing a picture, working backwards, making a list, etc. Students practice using these procedures to solve routine problems before attempting open-ended problems. Consequently, in many mathematics classroom settings, only advanced students get to open-ended problem solving, rather than offering it to allstudents.

I prefer to think of problem solving as the vehicle with which I teach mathematics. When problem solving is used this way, the emphasis is on finding interesting and engaging tasks or problems that help introduce or develop a mathematical concept or procedure. For example, a teacher could assign groups of students the problem of dividing pieces of licorice so that each student gets an equal share. This can allow students to get motivated (make discoveries about fraction concepts using a familiar and desirable object), to practice their learning (connect the concepts to skills), and to see relevance(fractions are worth learning).

One of the biggest challenges is finding the right problems, ones that have multiple possible answers found by various solution methods, while addressing important mathematical concepts. The right problems should connect to students’ previous learning, yet challenge and interest them. The focus is not on the answer to the problem, but on the methods for arriving at an answer. I like the analogy of the mule with a carrot dangling in front of it. If the carrot is too close, the mule eats it and goes nowhere. If it’s too far away, the mule sits down and goes nowhere. However, if the carrot is just far enough away, the mule will try to get it and make some progress, not minding that the carrot moves as the mule does. In a problem-solving classroom, the student perceives the problem as challenging (not too easy), yet not insurmountable (not so far out there that it is impossible).

Through open-ended problems, students make many of the decisions, not the teacher or textbook. They draw on previous knowledge and experience with related problems, constructing individual procedures before arriving at a solution. After the solution is found, the next step is crucial. The students must reflect on the problem-solving experience, trace their thinking process, and review the strategies attempted, determining why some worked and others didn't. This period of reflection deepens understanding of the problem, helps to clarify thinking about effective solution methods, and enables students to explain their reasoning to others. Thus, students can connect the problems and methods used to other areas of mathematics.

A couple experiences stick with me. I was able to be a guest teacher in a third grade classroom ready to study area and perimeter. I brought in some paper one-inch square regions and challenged the students to find as many polygonal regions made up of five pieces of paper. I was particularly struck by the enthusiasm and questions of a girl in the front row. She made wonderful discoveries about the area and perimeter and was willing to help others around her. I remarked to the teacher about the performance of that young lady. The teacher expressed surprise and delight. The girl was one of her special-education students who seldom was genuinely involved in the work of the class. The girl had been able to develop her own understanding of the mathematics and enjoy the work.

Another experience occurred in my Advanced Placement Calculus early on in my implementation of a problem-solving approach. We had been studying the calculation of area by taking thin "slices" and adding them. I asked my students to consider how they could find the volume of an onion I brought in to class. One of my struggling students volunteered to share his idea. I was pleased to see him get involved. He explained that he could peel the outer layer and think of it as a "ring", do the same for the next layer, and so on down to the core. If he could find the volume of each "ring", he could add them to get the total volume. His classmates, listening intently to his explanation, helped figure out how to do just that. He returned to his seat exuding a feeling of accomplishment he had rarely experienced before.

So, what's problem solving got to do with it? Nearly everything! Carefully chosen problems, implemented in conjunction with skill development, can get students excited about learning mathematics. They learn, too, that problem solving is not something they do every once in a while. It's a regular occurrence. Also, they develop persistence as they learn that what seems to be a new kind of problem is just an entry to new understanding. And, for me, it's more fun being a "Guide on the Side".

Bill Kring is a classroom veteran of over 30 years. He received the 1992 Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics Teaching. He was selected as the Contractor of the Month for February, 2014 by the A Pass staff.

Plagiarism: Punishment or Prevention?

By: Mona Meyer

According to a survey by the Psychological Record, 36% of undergraduate students admit to having plagiarized written material. A poll by US News and World Report found that 90% of students believe that cheaters are never caught or appropriately disciplined.  A study conducted by Donald L. McCabe found that 55% of college faculty would not take the time or effort to document suspected instances of cheating by students.

How troubling are these findings?

I think most would agree that discouraging plagiarism at college campuses by holding cheaters accountable for their actions contributes to a healthy society. But is punishment after the act really the best course of action? Is it even realistic, given that such a small percentage of college faculty seem motivated to document or report it?

What if faculty were to take a proactive preventive approach instead? To do this, they would need to understand the reasons WHY college students plagiarize. Consider the motivational differences between childhood and adult learners. It is well documented in educational research that children tend to be intrinsically curious and motivated to learn for learning’s sake, while adults are more motivated by how the learning can benefit them personally.

Consider, for example, John Keller’s ARCS model of motivation. According to this theory, to motivate adult learners, we should:

1. Gain their Attention by presenting novel or incongruous events or by posing challenging questions and problems to be solved.
2. Establish Relevance by appealing to the learner’s prior experience and demonstrating the usefulness of the skills being taught.
3. Build Confidence by allowing learners to control the learning environment and successfully complete tasks.
4. Ensure Satisfaction by presenting challenging tasks within a safe environment that promotes achievement.

Now, let’s take a look at the traditional methods of assessment used for college courses and consider whether or not they conform to these adult motivators.

1. For the most part, “survey” type courses tend to use assessment instruments such as midterms and final exams. These exams are usually multiple-choice format with the occasional short answer question thrown in here and there. Let’s look at this assessment method in terms of ARCS:
   1. There’s nothing particularly novel or incongruous about this sort of approach, and these instruments are usually more focused on fact recall than on problem solving. This sounds like a failure to gain Attention.
   2. Unless it’s very easy for learners to visualize how the information on the test is relevant to what they’ll be doing on the job, the Relevance is likely to be perceived as weak.
2. Do things improve when we move into upper-division coursework? In upper-division courses, learners are typically required to complete research papers and/or projects to demonstrate their mastery of the material. Although it’s true that Attention and Relevance are more easily achieved with this approach, we should also consider the typical measure of aptitude used in almost all colleges and universities for these assignments—the A-F grading scale.
   1. The fear of failure associated with using grades as a measure of aptitude certainly can undermine a learner’s Confidence. In fact, it’s not hard to imagine that learners turn to cheating to alleviate this fear.
   2. While most learners experience a sense of Satisfaction from the completion of a long-term project, this is often undermined by receiving a grade that is less than what they feel they deserve, given the amount of effort expended.

I’ll leave you with the following question, then. Should college professors expend a significant amount of time and energy trying to “catch” plagiarists, or would that energy be better spent designing methods of assessment that conform to theories of adult learning motivation? Food for thought.

This blog post was written by guest blogger and senior manager for instructional design at A Pass, Mona Meyer. 

Teaching for Twitter Writing

By: Andrew Pass

The very first time I heard of Twitter I thought it was doomed to failure. Who in the world would ever use a communication tool that was limited to 140 characters? It just was not the way that people wrote. I guess I haven't always been right in my life. Hopefully you will agree that this is not such a bad characteristic.

Though I learned to blog and Tweet over five years ago, I have not been using these tools since I started A Pass Educational Group. Of course, this blog has now been going since the beginning of the year. But, until now, I have not used Facebook or Twitter effectively to market A Pass. This is now changing. This past week I have begun to both update our new Facebook account and Tweet as well.

This leads me to what you will hopefully agree is an interesting question. Should educators be helping students learn Tweeting, Facebook and blogging skills in the classroom? For the purpose of brevity let's focus on a much narrower question -- should teachers be helping students learn to write complicated ideas in 140 characters or less?

Several days ago I Tweeted the following: "I'm writing a paper on value of connecting learning 2 hands on activities connected 2 real world scenarios. Any suggested sources?" Certainly this sentence is not grammatically correct, but I believe it gets the point across in fewer than 140 characters.

I believe that it is essential for students to learn to write in ways that work for their purposes. Some might think that this approach is too radical, that writing is not important in its own right, and rather it is only important insofar as it helps people achieve specific objectives, namely communicate. Within the last decade, patterns of communication have changed. Today people sometimes communicate important ideas within a framework that is constrained by 140 characters.

Educators must prepare students for these new patterns of communication. This means that sometimes it is okay to substitute arabic numbers for words. Sometimes it is actually good to omit articles and spell words without vowels. It's acceptable to do what has to be done to fit ideas into constrained contexts. However, and this is important, students must learn that different types of writing are required for different media.

As a business owner, I would be very unlikely to hire somebody who wrote a cover letter in which the numbers one through nine were written using the arabic numerals. I would expect to see proper articles and punctuation. In short, I would be most likely to respond to a letter that would have been considered appropriate ten years ago. However, a cover letter and Twitter are not the same things. They require different kinds of writing. (Of course, it is possible that these expectations will change in another decade, but for now, let’s focus on our current world.)

Ten years ago, I did not believe that Twitter would gain popularity. Today, this application has gained so much popularity that it has added to the skills that students must learn in school. Today, students must learn to write traditionally and write for new social media. This is no simple task!

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Organized Chaos: A Characteristic of an Awesome Classroom

By: Andrew Pass

The first time I ever heard the term “organized chaos,” I had no idea what it meant. However, it certainly didn’t sound very good, since I focused on the word "chaos."  I thought chaos was a terrible thing and we couldn't possibly want chaos to exist.  In time, I came to recognize the fact that since "organized" was the oxymoron of "chaos," it couldn't be all bad. As I learned more and more about teaching and learning, I came to cherish this state of affairs.

A situation that can accurately be described as "organized chaos" is one in which an outsider cannot see any specific pattern by which to describe the events transpiring.  However, the individual actors within the situation clearly understand what is happening. These individual actors are doing something that is organized and meaningful.  Of course, it's important to ask for whom meaning and structure are truly important, an actor within the event or an outsider.

If we briefly consider the nature of effective learning, it’s easy to recognize that learners must see meaning and purpose in what they are learning. Learners must recognize that they will gain something useful from the investment they make in the challenge of learning.

Why is it that young children recognize this fact so easily when they constantly ask “why?”  The reward for young children is easy to understand. It's the answer to the question that they want to know. It's simply unfortunate that as young children grow into older children and adolescents, they so often lose this inherent thirst for knowledge. Perhaps the reason is because typical school learning is not about answering personal questions, but rather, if any questions are answered at all, they have typically been imposed from on high.

Perhaps it's becoming obvious why I cherish a state of organized chaos in the classroom. In this state, rather than one common experience taking place, individuals or small groups are pursuing their own personal experiences. Learners are doing specific things because they find them important. People are to make their own decisions because they matter and their wishes are important. Young children are empowered to learn when they ask why. As educators, we must find ways to continuously empower all learners.

I am certainly not advocating that learners should be able to do whatever they want whenever they want. The term is organized chaos, not total chaos.

Many people, including me, would argue that it is very reasonable that, as a society, we would want to select some things that everybody should know. Those states that have adopted Common Core have made an explicit statement about a set of skills that the states believe all learners should possess. When individual states specify precise knowledge that learners should possess, they are doing the same thing. If all learning were dictated by states and local municipalities, there would be no chaos - it would all be organized.

In fact, for several decades, educational stakeholders believed that organized was the way to go. You could walk into a classroom and see the teacher standing in front of the room and students lined up in rows of desks. It was very organized and, for many students, very difficult to learn. In a society that stressed the importance of each individual, America's students were treated as members of groups, not individuals.

Certainly we are moving into an era of far more individualized learning. Students can access information in different ways. Students do not have to read, listen to, or watch the same content to learn the same facts. But I would argue that as educators we must pay attention to something else as well.

It's a generally accepted learning principle that people learn best by doing. Project-based learning is an important component of many successful classrooms today. Teachers are often celebrated when much active learning occurs in their classrooms. I would argue, however, that it is not a one-size-fits-all model.  Since individuals have varied interests and skills, one type of project may be very appropriate for one student and inappropriate for another. Different types of projects can have similar learning objectives, even though they are very different.

Ultimately, it is important to recognize that while the project is important as a vehicle for learning, it is the knowledge and skills that stem from the project, dictated by educational and/or political authorities, that are most important. Students will hopefully remember the knowledge and skills forever. They will undoubtedly forget the actual project. However, without a high quality project that fulfills the individual's needs, little will be learned.

Within a classroom that exemplifies organized chaos, different students are learning in different ways at the same time.  While other might not recognize what is happening, these learners will be on their way towards acquiring essential knowledge and skills, as defined by society.

Andrew Pass is the CEO of A Pass Educational Group and has done graduate work in Curriculum, Teaching, and Educational Policy at Michigan State University

An Instructor’s Content Wish List – the Rigorous and the Vigorous

By: Betsy Zobl Jagosz

Rigor is a prominent buzzword in education at the moment and Common Core Standards emphasize the need for rigorous content and learning. The emphasis on rigorous learning prevails in current conversations about education standards; a quick and dirty Google search on “rigor in education” returns more than 12 million results. The first page of hits is mostly journal articles with titles like “Characteristics of a Rigorous Classroom” and “Recognizing Rigor in Classrooms.” Clearly, rigor is all the rage.

Discussions of rigor tend to focus on the demanding nature of content, sometimes eliciting apprehensive visions of second graders learning about multivariables and sixth graders reading Ulysses. But the idea of rigor, alarmist extremes aside, is a good one –students must be given demanding, challenging content accompanied by high performance expectations. In all the conversation about creating rigorous content that challenges students, however, we don’t want to ignore the need for vigorous content as well.

Vigorous content is flexible and dynamic. Vigorous content doesn’t end with an answer; it ends with more questions and inspires reflective, evaluative student learning. It promotes real-world extrapolation and fosters critical thinking skills founded on rigorous content. Vigorous content can and should be demanding, but more than anything, it should propel the student beyond content. It gives the student an opportunity to build on the content after the student has written the paper and passed the exam.

An example from my classroom – students are reading a text set during the Afghan civil war. There is a great deal of Arabic vocabulary in the text, and students must be able to understand not just the literal meaning of Arabic words, but their meaning within an unfamiliar cultural context. The word tasbeh literally refers to prayer beads, but does tasbeh correlate to, for example, rosary? This is rigorous content, and by mastering the meanings of the unfamiliar words so that the vocabulary contributes to reading comprehension, students are responding to high performance expectations. At the end of the semester, though, what will they do with that new vocabulary? 

I invigorate and enhance the rigor of the text’s vocabulary by pushing students to project the idea of cultural nuances in vocabulary outside any one, in-class, text. Vigorous learning about vocabulary looks beyond individual words and their meanings and promotes vocabulary acquisition skills that have application across curricula and outside the classroom. Students learn about connotation vs. denotation and that the meaning of a word can shift depending on time and place. Content that teaches about language families encourages students to extrapolate the meaning of unfamiliar words based on common etymologies. This type of vigorous work with vocabulary guides students away from the dictionary and leads to an appreciation for the dynamic nature of language. Developing vocabulary acquisition skills is the vigorous counterpart to the rigor of learning demanding vocabulary words. 

Ideal educational content is both rigorous and vigorous. The challenge for content providers is in combining both. A rigorous biology text can have exquisitely detailed diagrams of body systems that give students the opportunity for in-depth exploration and understanding of how the body works. But a vigorously rigorous biology text could incorporate discussion of biomedical ethical issues beside those lovely diagrams, allowing students to locate the science of the body in the political and sociological domains. This discussion would provide students with multiple opportunities to think critically about issues like the integration of science and society and the grey areas that often surround conversations about ethics and morality. This reflective learning can take place in a safe, practice environment – the biology classroom – before students have to take their critical thinking skills on the road in the real world. 

By all means, let’s continue to prioritize rigor in our content and our classrooms. From an instructor's persepctive, we need to keep vigor at the top of the list as well. 

This post was written by guest blogger Betsy Zobl Jagosz. Betsy is the Director of Operations at A Pass Educational Group by day and English instructor at Oakland Community College by night.

Using Backward Design for Curriculum Planning

by: Ginger Bidell

One of the most challenging, and important, tasks facing teachers and instructional designers is curriculum planning. There is so much content. How do we decide what is most important and valuable for students to master?

Many people begin the planning process by developing lessons or reviewing textbooks first. Backward design, a curriculum planning approach introduced by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins, challenges teachers and designers to begin their planning process by developing goals for student learning. 

The backward design approach helps teachers and designers to establish priorities for learning and avoid using the textbook as the curriculum instead of a resource. This approach includes three steps: identifying the desired results, determining acceptable evidence of learning, and developing the learning plan. 

Step one: Identifying the desired results, including developing learning objectives. 

This step involves reflecting on the standards and curriculum map to identify the key concepts that students should know and be able to understand at the end of the unit. It is also important to identify the skills, knowledge, and behaviors that students are expected to acquire during the unit. For example, in a technical writing unit, an objective might be for students to effectively write for various audiences to enable others to perform a task. 

Step two: Determining acceptable evidence of learning. 

Another important question that teachers and designers must answer is “how do we know whether or not students have achieved our learning objectives?” This step requires teachers to consider what will be acceptable evidence that students have met the objectives. What will students need to do to demonstrate that they can effectively write for various audiences to enable them to perform a task?

In our example, students may provide evidence that they have met the objective by writing directions that will enable their peers to perform a task, for example making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Once students have written the directions, their classmates can follow the directions to see if they are able to successfully make the sandwich.

Step three: Developing the learning plan. 

Once we know what students need to be able to know and do, what needs to happen in the classroom to support that goal? What will need to be taught? What might need to be coached? What types of scaffolding will students need to meet their goals? And finally, what materials and resources will students need to acquire the needed information? 

A learning plan that would enable students to meet our objective might include a number of different activities. Students may need to learn aspects of technical writing from the teacher or textbook. They may need to view and discuss examples of technical writing. They will also need opportunities to practice their technical writing skills and receive feedback. For example, students could write technical directions for a task. Their classmates could use the directions and attempt to complete the task. Then, those classmates can provide feedback to the writer to help them fill in missing steps or information. Students might also write directions for their parents and have their parents provide feedback. Every activity in the learning plan will support students’ mastery of the objective. 

So back to our original question; in all of the content and materials that we have at our disposal, how do we decide what is most important and valuable for students to master?

Using backward design to plan learning units and courses helps teachers and designers to reflect on what is really important for students to learn. Establishing objectives first enables them to prioritize learning activities so that students can successfully master learning goals.

Wiggins, J & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

This post was written by Ginger Bidell, A Pass Educational Group, LLC, February contractor of the month. 

Ginger Bidell is an instructional designer who provides faculty support for the development, design, and revision of online and hybrid courses and programs at SUNY Buffalo State. In addition, Ginger has worked as a freelance instructional designer for A Pass Educational Group for the past year. Prior to working as an instructional designer, Ginger taught history and English language arts at the elementary and secondary levels. Ginger earned both her Bachelor of Science in Childhood Education and Social Studies and Master of Science in Education from SUNY Buffalo State.

Talking Story: Sharing Experiences in a Hawaiian Classroom

In a Hawaiian classroom, one might hear an ELA teacher suggest some food for thought and then allow the students to “talk story” at their tables or perhaps as a whole-class discussion. A loose translation of “talk story” is simply “discuss amongst yourselves” or “chat freely,” and, if one has never seen this before, it might at first appear unorganized. But in practice, it is much more than just an unstructured discussion.

Talk story represents a style of learning quite different from traditional lectures and direct instruction. 

Talk story can certainly be used in conjunction with these methods but is based on the premise that students and teachers share and learn from each other as equals in the classroom community.

Talk story recognizes the value, legitimacy, and diversity of student voices. In a society as richly diverse as a Hawaiian classroom, students may be of Hawaiian, Tongan, Samoan, Micronesian, or Filipino descent or may have Chinese, Japanese, or European heritage. Students might speak English, Hawaiian, or Pidgin or other languages at home. Students might have their own room in their parents’ three-bedroom, single-family home or share a bed in their auntie’s three-generation home. In some cases, students may sleep in the great outdoors under lightweight tents at the beach—because they have no home.

Over time and with practice, my second and third grade students on the Leeward side of Oahu began to thrive in this process of a shared discourse, which was quite different from what they were used to in previous classrooms. We established community agreements consistent with those taught in Tribes Learning Communities: attentive listening, mutual respect, right to pass/right to participate, and appreciations. My students understood the importance of their own perspectives and those of everyone around them. All voices deserved to be heard; all experiences contributed to the way they, as students, would dig into and digest everything we read.

I used talk story in a number of different ways. In addition to class discussions of read alouds, I set up Literacy Lunches, during which a reading group would get to come eat lunch with me once a week, and we’d read and chat. They’d communicate openly about a book’s thematic relevance in their lives such as overcoming a challenge and finding courage like in Ramona the Brave. Often from these discourses, the students would collaboratively and organically come up with the next inquiry topic for a writing project or a recommendation for the next book for Literacy Lunch. Their engagement with each text was profound and personal. They grew confident in the knowledge that their contextualized understanding was valuable and created substantive learning for all of us. I began to use talk story beyond just subject matter learning. At the end of each day, my students established a community circle to share successes and appreciations. This process was not an instructor-led reward system, but rather a time for students to participate in reflecting on their experiences from the day or the week and to celebrate themselves and each other. 

Talk story in a classroom is not just an opportunity for students to respond to a prompt. It is an invitation to speak, to listen, to reflect, to engage, to appreciate, to learn. It is an acknowledgement that each person’s background can give us something new to experience and share. It is a celebration of children and their profound voices and of a centuries-old oral tradition of sharing culture through story. It is the understanding that our students’ stories are an evolving, amorphous doorway through which they enter the world of the classroom a little new and different every day. And it is the belief that we, as teachers, can learn as much from our students as they may learn from us.

This post was written by guest blogger, Shira Hillyer, English/language arts director at A Pass Educational Group, LLC.

Are You Caught in the Web? Best Practices for Internet Research

A common concern for all information professionals is getting research completed with as little anxiety as possible and as efficiently and accurately as possible. When an assignment comes up, the first thing that most of us have been trained to do is go straight to the Internet. That in itself is not a bad thing, especially if we have a good idea of what we are looking for. But what often happens, especially with an unfamiliar topic, is that we search for answers and find ourselves in a murky sea of sometimes useless, inaccurate, and badly designed Web sites. At the very least, we can’t tell the difference between reliable information, propaganda, and just plain junk. This causes confusion and even more anxiety, and lost productivity.

It doesn’t have to be this way. There’s plenty of good information on the Internet; you just have to know how to find it and how to avoid the sites that aren’t trustworthy. Remember, the Internet is getting more complicated every day, due in part to marketing efforts designed to fool the naïve user. Therefore, finding information requires some level of sophistication on the part of the researcher.

One thing I’d suggest is that you subscribe to a recognized, trustworthy general-reference service like Britannica.com and supplement it with free sites by respected organizations, such as NASA, the Smithsonian, and the Library of Congress. Information from major publishers and government agencies is usually reliable.

Sites without marquee names may have good information as well, but they require some scrutiny. 

Here are some tips on what to look for:

Credentials. Are the authors of the site experts in the subject? Look for degrees, publications, and institutional affiliations. For example, a professor at a well-known university who has written a book about Chaucer is probably a good source on medieval literature.

Accuracy. A few minutes on a site should give you a sense of whether it’s generally reliable. Look up a subject you know something about and see what it says. Does the information coincide with your prior knowledge?

Point of View. Does the site promote a strident point of view? Is it heavily commercial? Because children may have trouble distinguishing fact from opinion, it’s usually best to stick with sites that strive for objectivity, at least for grade-school work.

Presentation, Navigation, and Design. If you are providing the site to a younger audience, is the site too scholarly for children? Not scholarly enough? Is it easy to navigate? Does it have a “child friendly” look and feel? These are questions you should ask to find the site that best suits your objectives.

Here are some examples of free sites that Britannica editors recommend, compiled and annotated by Britannica indexers.

Smithsonian Institution. The site has three large sections: Art & Design, History & Culture, and Science & Technology.

The Nobel Foundation. It’s easy to browse and has information on the prize awarders and the recipients as well as an interesting “Explore and Learn” section.

The Busch Entertainment Corporation Family of Parks. A good source for exploring the animal kingdom, with pictures, scientific classifications, fun facts, and bibliographies on many animal species.

PBS Online. With up-to-date features, the site has four large sections on general topics (Arts & Drama, History, Home & Hobbies, Life & Culture, and Science & Nature) and a section dedicated to News and Views.

Also, the Web has good sites for major sports associations and halls of fame with information on their specific sports. Examples include tennis, football, and baseball.

Universities are often an excellent source for reliable information. The University of Virginia, for example, maintains a large section on American Studies. Topics include the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition—odd for a Virginia school, perhaps, given that the fair took place in Chicago.

Renascence Editions of the University of Oregon has an extensive database of original texts of English literature.

The National Park Service offers a panorama of the American historical landscape, national parks, historic monuments, and landmarks.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an excellent source on space exploration and has a special section for younger students.

The Academy of Achievement has a good collection of contemporary biographies with sound and video clips, interviews, and photo galleries.

The Web Gallery of Art. This Hungarian site (in English) has an extensive, searchable database of high-resolution images of European paintings and sculptures from the 12th to the mid-19th century.

There are many others. Explore the Web and discover what’s there; just make sure to look carefully and teach your researchers and editors to do the same. Most of all, remember that there is much knowledge that can’t be found on the Internet, and for that your local library is still the best source, especially because your library will most likely subscribe to quality databases that are not free on the Internet. And libraries can almost always be accessed remotely. And speaking of the library, professional librarians are excellent guides on how to use and how not to use the Internet. See “The Librarian’s Guide to Great Web Sites for Kids” and “ALA’s Great Web Sites for Kids.”

It’s great to be able to take advantage of all of the information that is now available at our fingertips on the Web; but without some guidance the inexperienced researcher can get all tied up in knots. But being attentive to the pitfalls and the advantages of what is available online, and being mindful of what may or may not be trusted content, can help even the novice researcher untangle the Web.

This blog post was written by Michael Ross, senior vice president and general manager for education at Britannica, and board member of A Pass Educational Group, LLC. 

Adapted from a Britannica blog post, “Untangling the Web: A Student Guide to the Internet,” by Michael Ross, August 28, 2007

Learning with "the Other": A Visit to an Arab/Jewish School in Jerusalem

This past December, I had the opportunity to visit a very special school in Jerusalem, the Max Rayne Hand in Hand Jerusalem School. This school, which runs from kindergarten to twelfth grade, includes both Arab and Jewish children. Only an absolute optimist would consider the Arab and Jewish communities in Israel to be friends. Yet, in this one school, children from both communities learn together, hand in hand. 

The composition of this school is relatively straightforward. The administration, including both a Jewish and an Arab head, strives to include an equal number of Arab and Jewish children in each class. Each classroom includes both an Arab and a Jewish teacher. Hebrew and Arabic are spoken equally within the classroom. Students do not view their teachers as “the Arab teacher” and “the Jewish teacher.” Rather, they view them as “my teachers.” 

One idea struck me from the moment I walked into this school and continues as I think about my experiences two months later. As an outsider within the school, I could not distinguish between Arab and Jewish students. Instead of seeing students from a particular ethnic background, I saw younger children and older teenagers who came together as classmates and friends. 

Significantly, Arab and Jewish children attend the school for different reasons. According to our tour guide, many of the Arab students attend the school because it is the best educational opportunity to which they have access. Jewish students, on the other hand, attend the school because their parents value the concept of egalitarian education. Regardless of why students attend this school, they are there learning together. The concept of “otherness” that causes so much conflict in Israel and other parts of the world is eliminated in this school. The school truly becomes one inclusive community. 

It might be appropriate to ask why students learning together in a school are able to put their differences aside in order to develop a cohesive community. But the answer seems so obvious: It is much easier for children and teenagers to get over certain kinds of differences than it is for adults. They do not recognize ethnic and cultural differences. In our adult world, ethnic and cultural differences lead to war and death. 

The real question is, how can the world learn from children who overcome differences in order to form cohesive communities? How can adults use the knowledge, or perhaps naïvete, of children to make this a better world?

This post was written by Andrew Pass, founder and CEO at A Pass Educational Group, LLC.

Story Telling in Education: Crafting the Fiction Passage

We are all storytellers by nature. Before the existence of written language, we preserved stories—of cultural triumphs and defeats, everyday comedic and tragic circumstances, and personal musings and reflections—through the traditions of oral history. Though we still engage in such oral storytelling practices—“You won’t believe what happened to me today!”—the written word has gained tremendous power in the art of storytelling. We write with different aims: to entertain, to express, to inform, to persuade. Perhaps the greatest challenge, in a vast landscape of truths available in this information age, is to create engaging stories with purpose and educational value.

As an M.F.A. student currently crafting and polishing my first novel, I have discovered many valuable facets of good fiction writing: individual voice, precise word choice, concise description, and powerful plot development, to name a few. As a seasoned professional in educational publishing, I have also now come to recognize the greater challenges that arise in encapsulating these elements within the space of the educational fiction passage. 

1. Individual Voice

Sure, educational fiction passages should display a unique authorial voice. However, there are other elements to consider when writing for K-12 students. Is this voice appropriate for the age bracket? Will it ring true based on their current developmental abilities and considerations? In educational writing, these factors are more important than unique authorial voice. We must take care to speak to students in a context they can understand, process, and appreciate within their developmental levels.

2. Precise Word Choice

Similarly, we must consider the depth of students’ vocabulary at any given stage of their education. An elevated word choice—no matter how precise and appropriate for an adult reader—will likely be lost on a younger student reader. An excellent resource for gauging grade-level appropriate vocabulary is the EDL Core Vocabularies in Reading, Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies. This and other guides will help the educational writer discern appropriate and effective word choice in crafting the educational fiction passage.

3. Concise Description

Concision is especially important in educational writing for a couple of reasons. First, the student must read, absorb, and respond to the content within a given amount of time. Second, the educational fiction passage usually falls between 500 and 1,000 words, depending on the intended grade level. This limited space creates a challenge for the fiction writer, who often longs to wax eloquent in his or her prose. The key is to resist this urge and focus instead on the essential details. What does the student need to know in order to answer the questions dictated by the appropriate educational standards? Which essential details will convey the necessary information and keep the student engaged, so that the main points and objectives are recognized, accepted, and applied? If any details do not prove essential under this scrutiny, eliminate them, or recast them in ways that do. 

4. Powerful Plot Development

Each fiction passage must display a complete story arc, a beginning, middle, and end, complete with rising action, falling action, and dénouement. It is important not to distract the student in his or her detection of missing elements in the story arc. (What happened to the heroine in the end? Why didn’t the hero complete his journey?) The aim is not to trick students into discerning some hidden meaning or outcome. All elements of the arc must exist within the text, so that students may complete their own journeys in achieving the educational objectives of the passage and questions that will follow. As educational writers, it is our duty to provide all elements of this arc, so that students may travel it and reach their individual conclusions. 

We are all storytellers. As educational writers, we are also guides, leading students on their educational paths with engaging and effective storytelling elements. In keeping our audience—and our objectives of teaching and entertaining—in mind, we will inevitably continue to contribute to the development of creative minds and a rich future of storytelling to come.

(This blog post was written by guest blogger and project manager at A Pass Educational Group, LLC, Trilby Greene.)

Standardized Testing: What's the Point?

American students sure do take a lot of tests. According to a study quoted in The Washington Post, some students spend nearly a full 24 hours on testing each year. That doesn’t include the time spent preparing for the test, by the way. There are certainly debates to be had about the appropriateness of such extensive testing, but I want to steer away from the politics. Assuming that this testing is here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future, how can we make the best of it?

Consider the following question: What is the stated purpose of standardized testing? The results of standardized tests can be used to answer many questions, but their basic purpose (that ultimately informs all other applications) is to determine the extent to which a given test taker has mastered a particular concept or skill:

Is test taker A able to demonstrate mastery of skill or concept X?

That’s it. Simple, right?

Well, maybe. But there are a few things that can get in the way.

Take this item for example:

Stem: If a letter is chosen at random from the letters in the word ELEPHANT, what is the probability that the letter chosen will be a vowel?

a) 2/7
b) 3/8
c) 3/5
d) 5/8
Correct Answer: (b)

Seems pretty good, but we have to evaluate it against the goal: Is test taker A able to demonstrate mastery of skill or concept X? In this case the stated skill was: Develop a uniform probability model by assigning equal probability to all outcomes, and use the model to determine probabilities of events. The item accomplishes this. Each letter is an outcome, they are each equally likely to happen, and based on that, the student can determine the likelihood of a particular event, in this case choosing a vowel. Good. Done. Right?

Well, not so fast. The item does address the stated benchmark, but that’s not all it addresses. There is another key to being able to unlock this item that has nothing to do with probability or even mathematics: knowing the difference between a vowel and a consonant. Well, that’s OK—everyone knows that, right? But what about English language learners? Or just the kid who missed that day? Test takers could have a perfect grasp of the skill of computing uniform probability but still miss this item because they don’t know what a vowel is (thus needing to guess) or because they confuse a vowel with a consonant (leading them to answer choice d). Because the goal of the item is to test mastery of probability, it would provide faulty results. 

We must be sure that the item we write is actually testing the concept we’re trying to measure and nothing else. The argument can certainly be made that in order to write items that address applications, we must include outside material, and I believe that’s true. The point is that we have to be careful about what that outside material is, how accessible it will be to the variety of test takers, and how reasonable it is at the grade level being addressed.

Is testing outside material the only problem with the item? Unfortunately, no. The wording of the stem is ambiguous and leads to difficulty understanding what the possible outcomes are. Are we to assume that each letter of the word “ELEPHANT” is written on a card and placed in the proverbial hat—8 cards, E appears twice—or are we just to look at the letters and choose from among them—7 choices because there are 7 different letters? This ambiguity in the stem makes answer choice (a) a possibly correct answer, but it wouldn’t be scored as correct. So, we could have a student who has reasonably interpreted the item and shown mastery of the concept who would still get the item wrong—all because the item is ambiguously worded.

At this point, the only answer choice that definitely shows misunderstanding of the concept is answer choice (c). I guess we could try to score items to represent that in some way, but it’s much easier if the correct answer (according to the scoring guide) is the only correct answer and that it actually tests the content of the benchmark alone. 

Both of these issues make it difficult for test takers to demonstrate the mastery that they do, in fact, possess. There are actually many ways to do this, but there are also ways to write items that allow those who don’t have mastery to appear as if they do.

Here’s an example of a high school level item that does just that:

Lead-in: Read this citation from Charles Montesquieu and answer the question below.

“But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.” — Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, Book XI

Stem: How did this citation from Montesquieu influence the content of the U.S. Constitution?

a. by observing that the consolidation of power within a single body predisposes abuse, thus encouraging the separation of powers among governmental branches
b. by establishing the principle that authority of the government is created and sustained by the consent of its people
c. by promoting a form of government in which all eligible citizens participate equally
d. by supporting the rebellion of the common people

Correct Answer: (a)

Sounds good, right? Lots of fancy words. A quote from Montesquieu—nice nod to the Common Core. It even seems to address its stated goal:Demonstrate an understanding of the origins and purposes of government, law, and the American political system.

OK, but do test takers need to know their stuff in order to get it right? Actually, could a sophisticated reader maybe get it right without even looking at the stem? 

Here’s the hard truth. Answer choice (a) LOOKS like the right answer. It’s longer than the others, but it’s also much more well developed both grammatically and conceptually. And let’s face it—we tend to put more thought into the right answer.

But let’s say our test taker didn’t notice that rather obvious difference from the other answer choices. How else does this item, just by the way it is written, help the test taker to get the right answer? Or at least to make a better guess? Take a look at answer choice (d). I may not be able to figure out the right answer immediately, but I can easily eliminate (d) because even someone who can’t decode the quote at all would probably know that the Constitution does not include a “revolution” clause. If I can eliminate (d), my chance of guessing correctly just jumped from 25% to 33%, and that better chance has nothing to do with the stated goal of the item. Pretty good. It’s at least enough of a jump to make my score less representative of my actual understanding of the material.

So what’s the solution? Write distractors that are as sophisticated as the correct answer and make sure they are all plausible.

After all, these test results are used to evaluate schools, teachers, students, curricula, and more. Faulty results like the ones that can result from the problems shown here have real, tangible consequences. And if we’re going to do all this testing, its results may as well be reliable.

(This blog post was written by guest blogger and Chief Instructional Officer at A Pass Educational Group, LLC, Sarah Bierman.)