CAT Tracks for January 17, 2011
THE SEVEN STEPS

TEACHERS:

If you do not read another edition of CAT Tracks, you simply MUST read this one.

This retired CAT can simply bite his tongue no longer...


I've spent much of the past decade defending you against your detractors.

That was a relatively simply task during the reign of our "Education President" George W. Bush, who could not spell, much less pronounce...ISAT. However, with the "turning of the Democrats", my self-appointed mission takes on a greater sense of urgency.

I can now reveal the reason why there were no CAT Tracks published on a couple of days during the past week. I was in a non-stop writing mode...reducing to print the expertise that I gained over a 39-year career in education. The working title of my missive..."The Seven Steps to Highly Effective Teaching"

If you are not doing precisely what I have painstakingly outlined below - every second of every single day, then you need to immediately:

Shape Up or Ship Out!!!

Since I never "preach", I was patiently waiting...wishin' and hopin'...that you would discover this "silver bullet" to education success on your own.

However, with Democrats and Republicans linking arms and singing "Education Kumbaya", the wolf is at your door!

Without another moment to lose...


Chapter 15. Seven Steps to Turn a Classroom Around


The prior chapters suggest seven steps to alter students’ cooperation and energy quickly. We’ll picture a class that’s distracted, marginally compliant, and with a spectrum of achievement among them. You’d like to increase their cooperation and interest, and bring everyone’s learning to a higher level.

These steps can be implemented in a few days.

  1. Measure distraction time exactly and deduct it from free time. The first need is just for students to pay better attention to learning activity and other requests you make of them. Begin by corralling their attention. We can’t obtain willing cooperation by repression, so we look for a way to engage them without arousing opposition or sabotage. They may be startled to realize that you can seize what matters to all of them — their free time. For this, time to the second how long they spend not complying with direction, your time waiting for them to quiet down. Such monitoring can help bring order to distractive activity, minimize their interruptions and delays in beginning a learning activity, and shorten the transition time between activities. You add up their day’s accumulation and deduct it from periods they spend at desired activities such as lunch, recess, sports, free time, release at the end of the day, and use of special equipment. This gives them an immediate reason to encourage each other to comply.

  2. Allow them to accumulate bonus time and link it to distraction time. Since we want to encourage them as well as sanction misbehavior, we provide them a small benefit when they give more attention to learning. As in step one above, we measure distraction time but deduct it from a presumptive bonus time of, for example, five minutes for every hour of diligent focus on learning. They quickly realize that by cooperating, they steadily earn more freedom, recess, privileges, or special experiences.

  3. Appreciation time daily. Every day go around the class asking each one “Who was friendly to you today and what did they do to show it?“ or “Who gave you a good feeling today?“ This helps reduce anti-social behavior, see each other as sources of pleasure rather than threat, and conditions them to think in terms of good feelings. Upper classes may be able to explore the sources of good feelings with class discussions about the meaning of friendship, how they act differently if they want to make friends, how they themselves wish to be treated, and things they can thank each other for. The key is that in some way they recognize and acknowledge each other’s attempt to act positively.

  4. Practice learning to master it. Hourly, extract from every lesson the question(s) and answer(s) contained in it and save them. Assuming that a high-stakes test included a question about everything you treat, what would it be? Such key points need to be 1) written out in students’ own summary notes so they use the words of their own brain to collect their understanding in one place, and 2) practiced with a peer who asks the question and checks their answer against the correct one in their notes. Doing these two things, students are more likely to master and claim their knowledge, assuring fundamental learning.

  5. Perform mastered learning every day. The emotional reward that matters most to students comes from others’ positive response to their effort. We can arrange for them to admire each other with a brief performance of learning hourly or at day’s end. 1) Draw a question they’ve mastered, 2) draw a student’s name, 3) have the student stand and give the answer, and 4) everyone applauds. They show off what they know. Content becomes more varied as students fill an individual bag with question-slips also about their personal interests.

  6. Score and chart mastered learning. Students love to see scoreboards that faithfully report the results of their effort. They enjoy applying effort and claiming increments of improvement. Have a comprehensive chart on which they can record their growing number of mastered points of knowledge for all their subjects, all the questions they know the answers to, counted only once and maintained thereafter. A glance at this chart shows the amount of learning they claim to know “without looking or guessing.”

  7. Understand and score communication skills and any behaviors you want them to develop. The same pleasure at monitoring personal progress noted above can be applied to any ability, such as to communication skills from basic to refined. Invite them to tally their own use of communication skills and positive behaviors (sharing, taking turns, cleaning up, obtaining supplies, helping another, doing a service unasked, and redirecting others’ attention), and reinforce others’ use of positive skills by tallying theirs as well.. Students can change rapidly when they practice new skills, and teachers and peers recognize their effort.

The steps above work because of students’ social nature. They’re touched by the opinions of those about them, cluster with others like them, do what brings others’ approval, and are rewarded by others’ admiration for their competence. It’s not hard to notice the energy involved. Maybe you can remember from your schooling when you had to prepare a report to the class, and how keyed up you were. A teacher noted that most students he knew “would rather have a sharp stick in the eye” than rise to their feet and talk. If he was right, we can do something about it. Whatever we want them to present to the class, we first have them practice one to one quietly and safely until they’re confident. Once competent with the knowledge, expressing it is a lifetime satisfaction. Once getting a taste of it, they’ll want to do it even better, so we set up performance of learning to insure triumph. If we don’t arrange the early steps, we don’t get the later accomplishment. If we don’t get competence first, students don’t enjoy expressing it later.

Apply this to yourself. Say you’re at a seminar, the instructor explains a new idea, you absorb an impression of it, and the instructor unexpectedly asks you to stand and comment. Your words are necessarily sketchy, perhaps incompletely organized and inadequately thought through. Even as an educated professional, you may feel embarrassed, yet your feeling is only a construct of the situation you’re placed in.

Much seat-work or reading brings on poorly formed knowledge not ready for competent expression. Fill in a blank or complete a sentence or answer a question at the end of a chapter, and what remains to demonstrate? Temporary knowledge may increase a tick, but without practice, no competence. For students to claim it by the end of a lesson, they need a way to practice it right there. Choose the core knowledge you want everyone to master, and organize it concisely enough for them to do so. A teacher of a sophomore health class presents ‘eight signs of cancer’ on a handout for the class to master that period, and everyone does so with pleasure using 1) a hard copy of the idea (either on a hand-out, in a text, or in written notes), 2) a question that elicits it as an answer, and then 3) time to practice it with a partner until learned thoroughly.

Once they know the material, the next energizer is performing it (cf. Chapter 19 below). You’ve identified everything you want retained during a given week and placed in a bag a slip containing each question. You say, “Friday, we’re going to have a stand -up performance. I’ll draw a question, wait a minute while you think, and then draw someone’s name. You leap to your feet, explain the answer, everyone applauds, and you sit down. We’ll work our way through the questions we’ve learned this week.”

What would happen?

Working with successive practice partners to get ready generates a sense of teamwork, a feeling that “We’re all in this together.” Students develop “conversation contracts” with others. If Bill and Joe (who don’t usually associate) practice math questions together, later they’re more likely to accept each other and perhaps even talk about math. They want the competence but are driven more by the social reciprocity of gaining it. The personal element expands the reason for their effort just as an upcoming game in a sport shadows them as they practice.

When they finally sit down, the crackle of applause conveys a zing of significance. Preparing for and doing the performance feels important. You can channel your entire curriculum through performance as your validator of competence. This picture of motivation applies early and at every step onward. In pre-k to about second grade, their needs for attention are so strong that they immediately focus more intently on learning when they face the prospect of standing, performing, and being applauded.

But how about the isolated student from third grade to twelfth? His academic work is okay but from early discomfort with peers, he’s decided to keep to himself, or associate with others like him, or express needs for attention disruptively. How do you help him?

A valid basis for self-esteem is a history of successes. A child restores his confidence by looking back and remembering that he did valued things before, but with some students, the message system was stunted, and the student concludes that success is hollow, that working doesn‘t end up feeling good. He does the tasks but no bell rings nor applause erupts telling him “This matters in your social world.” We instead want him concluding, “I not only succeed, but the tasks bind me to the people around me.“

The crux of it is drawing on academic competence in a manner that causes peer relationships to solidify. Four means draw on his social base: 1) In partner practice they bring to mastery everything learned till then. Pairing them successively with every other student causes them to realize that they‘re accepted into their group. It provides them a history with each other, expanding their generalized sense of self to include the belief that they can get along with and work with anybody. 2) Stand-up performance of the bits and pieces of learning as question and answer draws out the isolated student and lets him know that he can face others’ scrutiny. The performance of material practiced to the point of competence takes its place within his history of certified successes. 3) Applause by peers delivers the message “You matter.” The unconscious is conditioned to hear “People like what I did.” 4) Keeping score of the success delivers the same message but helps to affirm the link between effort and results. Scores are stated to represent effort objectively and reliably, aiding students in directing their effort to the results they want.


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