Compacting and Differentiating for New Content

1. Compacting and Differentiating for New Content Differentiating for Gifted Learners: Class 3

2. Agenda for Today • Alternative Grading Options • Background information • Strategies • Study Guide • Tic/Tac/Toe and Extension Menus

3. Alternative Grading Options • Reshaping grading methodology in public education is impossible without also examining and reshaping traditional teaching methodologies. • Most of the suggestions for alternative grading methods require teachers to change how they plan, instruct, and/or assess. • Taking the risk and trying one of these new methodologies has the power to successfully transform your instructional effectiveness, student learning, and parental involvement.

4. Alternative Grading Options • Standards Based Grading • In the past few years there have been pushes in many states towards standards based grading. • Standards based grading usually adopts 0-4 scale that notes if a student has met a particular standard. • 4.1 (A+), 4 (A), 3.7 (A-), 3.4 (B), 2.8 (C), 2 (F), 0 (F) • Individual Learning Projects with Rubrics • Projects based learning or self-directed learning breeds life long learners and trains students how to complete real world research and tasks. • Rubrics provide students with a road map for success and teachers with a more objective way to evaluate student progress. • When designing rubrics, don’t be too vague or it might lend itself to subjectivity. Focus on the performance, process, and progress, not solely on the final product. A resource you can use is Rubistar.

5. Alternative Grading Options • Self-Assessed Learning Goals • Goal setting is a strategy every student needs to learn in order to be a productive adult in today’s society. • Students should be empowered to analyze, assess, and reflect on their progress, goals, and achievement. • Have your students come up with goals – personal, academic, and creative. • Motivate, encourage, and enable them by providing them with a structure for measuring, monitoring, and mastering these goals.

6. Alternative Grading Options • Portfolios • Portfolios are an excellent way to document, monitor, and assess student growth. • They also serve as incredible motivators which enhance student effort. • Whether the portfolio is online or in files parents will love being able to physically see their student’s progress. • One of the challenges with reshaping traditional grading methodologies is building parent support. Parents expect grades, but a viewing, student reflection and teacher discussion of a portfolio is much more authentic and meaningful for parents.

10. Novice to Expert Continuum Gives students feedback on skills Moves the assessment away from amassing points to acquiring skills Can be used for portfolios, real world scenarios, project and cooperative work Does not need to replace traditional grading, can be used in addition to it Provides new sources of relevant feedback to parents and students Allows children to self-assess their own skills.

15. Study Guide Method • How does it work? • Compact new curriculum by reducing the amount of time gifted students must spend learning grade level standards. • At the start of a unit, students decide to either choose guided study with the class or the study guide (independent study). • Students agree to meet the required standards by the required checkpoints by pursuing their own study • DO NOT pretest when content is new • Students take the same assessments (tests/quizzes) to demonstrate mastery as the rest of the class

16. When and Why to Compact for New Content • When the standards are likely to be unfamiliar: • Literature, Science, Social Studies, Health • Previous strategies are only applicable if students have had opportunities to learn the curriculum previously • Needed since gifted students can learn material more quickly than their age peers • Gifted students should be allowed to move through new material at a faster pace • They can learn much of the material without the actual activities

17. Does this idea make you feel uncomfortable? • You may worry… • They will develop poor work habits • Other students will perceive their work as “special privileges” • Remember: • You never excuse students from regular work unless they have demonstrated that… • They have already mastered the required standards • They can learn material in a much shorter time period

18. Step #1: Preparing the Study Guide • Decide on the unit of study • Choose 10-20 standards (depending on the length of the unit) and list them in order on the study guide • Make sure to create a task description for each that tells students what they must learn about it • Insert checkpoints and dates: Students will take the assessments at the same time the rest of the class does • Make sure the first checkpoint is soon after the start of the unit; students who find they are struggling with the study guide method will have time to return to the rest of the class.

20. Step #2: Present the Study Guide to ALL Students • Explain the process to all students • They can decide if it’s best for them • If students make an incorrect choice (in your eyes)… • Remind them about the characteristics they should have to be successful (next slide) • Allow them to continue….they will probably find out for themselves it’s not the best option

21. Identifying Students • Describe the characteristics, to students, that they need to have to be successful to use the study guide • Examples: • Be highly motivated to complete independent study and research • Be able to motivate yourself, without a lot of prompting and reminders from teachers or parents • Be interested to learn material beyond the required standards • Be able to think creatively, solve many of your problems independently, and be willing to ask questions • Be willing to work hard and search for materials independently • Be able to set independent goals, monitor your own progress, and meet deadlines without a lot of support from Ms. Wagner

22. Identifying Students • The Study Guide Method is perfect for students…. • Who often ace tests without doing any homework • Tend to dominate class discussions because they know so much about the topics, but tend not to hand in homework

23. Step #3: Hold a Study Guide Meeting • Have interested students meet privately with you, and review the process more in depth with these students. • Review the grading • If students do not demonstrate mastery of the required standards on the assessments (tests and quizzes), they will rejoin the class • Review their alternate choices (hand out the Product Choices Chart) • Sharing their learning with the class • Review the Work Log • Review the Independent Study Agreement • Give them 1-2 days to make their final decision

27. The Teacher’s Role • “Guide on the Side” • Gifted students want the opportunity to run with their learning, but also want to know they are not forgotten • When students encounter challenging advanced learning material, they still need a teacher’s guidance • When other students are working alone or in groups, meet with SG students • When the class is reading independently for 10-15 minutes, meet with SG students • Invite SG students to eat lunch with you once a week

29. Study Guide Work Time • For an upcoming unit of study, create a study guide of your own. • You will get 15 minutes to get started!

30. TIC TAC TOE: Student Choice Activity Gives students a variety of tasks to accomplish that can hit a variety of skills and competencies You can choose some activities that all students must do and then allow choice for the other activities Allows for students to be creative and be empowered to dictate the direction of their own learning about a particular topic

32. TIC TAC TOE EXAMPLES: Models & Diagrams Models and Diagrams: Model T Ford

33. Models & Diagrams: Clay Figurines of Suffrage Movement

34. Authentic Assessments: Real World Tasks • Definitions of Authentic Assessments • A form of assessment in which students are asked to perform real-world tasks that demonstrate meaningful application of essential knowledge and skills -- Jon Mueller • "...Engaging and worthy problems or questions of importance, in which students must use knowledge to fashion performances effectively and creatively. The tasks are either replicas of or analogous to the kinds of problems faced by adult citizens and consumers or professionals in the field." -- Grant Wiggins -- (Wiggins, 1993, p. 229). • "Performance assessments call upon the examinee to demonstrate specific skills and competencies, that is, to apply the skills and knowledge they have mastered." -- Richard J. Stiggins -- (Stiggins, 1987, p. 34). .

35. Real World Tasks • A distinguishing feature of authentic tasks is that they have value and meaning beyond the classroom. • When students engage in authentic tasks, they do and experience what they, or other people, might do or experience in a real-life setting. In a classroom, this might mean participating in real-world tasks that are similar to the kind of tasks that experts engage in. • Authentic tasks are important because they provide meaning and motivation for learning. • They provide students with opportunities to relate to real-world situations, make connections to their own interests, and engage deeply with subject matter. • One of the key benefits of authentic tasks is that they introduce students to ways of reasoning and problem solving that represent the work of professionals in practice, which has the advantage of helping students build real-world expertise. • As students engage in authentic tasks, they create products or artifacts that showcase the skills and knowledge they have acquired. Often, these artifacts can be used for assessment purposes in a manner that reflects the complexity of how performance is evaluated in the real world.

36. Real World Task Research • John Dewey (1933) advocated the use of authentic tasks to help students acquire and deepen subject matter knowledge and enhance their logical reasoning and self-regulation skills. • Central to Dewey's view was that children learn best through purposeful activity and that real-world tasks are ideal for developing useful skills and knowledge. • Psychologist David Perkins (1993) discussed that knowledge which often results from rote memorizing and is not easily transferred to other situations is called inert knowledge. • For meaningful learning to occur, students need to be cognitively engaged, or intellectually invested, and active in applying ideas. Cognitive engagement depends not only on the task itself, but also on the context in which the task is situated. This idea is referred to as situated cognition (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989). • Situated cognition emphasizes that the activity and the context in which the activity unfolds are integral to what is learned.

37. REAL WORLD TASKS RESEARCH According to the situated cognition perspective, when students learn new information in the context of authentic tasks, they are able to make sense of the new information and relate it to what they already know or have experienced. Without some framework in which to connect new ideas, students face difficulty in bringing together new information and organizing it in a way that can be easily recalled and put to use. Situated cognition also suggests that when students participate in authentic tasks, they acquire information about the conditions and situations in which it is useful to know and apply what they have learned. As a result, they are more likely to be able to take what they have learned in one situation and transfer it to another. beyond the classroom.

38. What does Authentic Assessment look like? An authentic assessment usually includes a task for students to perform and a rubric by which their performance on the task will be evaluated.

39. Steps to Create An Authentic Assessment • Summary of Steps • Identify your standards for your students. • For a particular standard or set of standards, develop a task your students could perform that would indicate that they have met these standards. • Identify the characteristics of good performance on that task, the criteria, that, if present in your students’ work, will indicate that they have performed well on the task, i.e., they have met the standards. • For each criterion, identify two or more levels of performance along which students can perform which will sufficiently discriminate among student performance for that criterion. The combination of the criteria and the levels of performance for each criterion will be your rubric for that task (assessment).

40. How is Authentic Assessment similar to/different from Traditional Assessment? • Traditional Assessment • By "traditional assessment" (TA) I am referring to the forced-choice measures of multiple-choice tests, fill-in-the-blanks, true-false, matching etc.  Students typically select an answer or recall information to complete the assessment. These tests may be standardized or teacher-created.  • Essentially, TA is grounded in educational philosophy that adopts the following reasoning and practice: • 1. A school's mission is to develop productive citizens. • 2. To be a productive citizen an individual must possess a certain body of knowledge and skills. • 3. Therefore, schools must teach this body of knowledge and skills. • 4. To determine if it is successful, the school must then test students to see if they acquired the knowledge and skills. • In the TA model, the curriculum drives assessment. "The" body of knowledge is determined first.  That knowledge becomes the curriculum that is delivered.  Subsequently, the assessments are developed and administered to determine if acquisition of the curriculum occurred

41. Authentic Assessment • In contrast, authentic assessment (AA) springs from the following reasoning and practice: • 1. A school's mission is to develop productive citizens. • 2. To be a productive citizen, an individual must be capable of performing meaningful tasks in the real world. • 3. Therefore, schools must help students become proficient at performing the tasks they will encounter when they graduate. • 4. To determine if it is successful, the school must then ask students to perform meaningful tasks that replicate real world challenges to see if students are capable of doing so. • Thus, in AA, assessment drives the curriculum.  That is, teachers first determine the tasks that students will perform to demonstrate their mastery, and then a curriculum is developed that will enable students to perform those tasks well, which would include the acquisition of essential knowledge and skills.  This has been referred to as planning backwards (e.g., McDonald, 1992).

42. AA - Math-6th Grade • The Value of Stocks- What’s it worth now? • STANDARDS • Content: Round numbers to given place values • Content: Solve problems involving decimal values Content: Give evidence of work done to solve a problem • Process: Make conclusions from given data • Process: Reflect on work done • TASK • You have tracked a stock for 5 days. Looking at your graph you can see if the stock made or lost money over the five days. If you really invested money in this stock specifically how much money would you have made or lost each day? Use your work page to record the following: Decide an amount of money between $1000 and $10,000 to hypothetically say you invested in your chosen stock. Divide this amount by the price of one share at the start of your data collection. Show work and record this number to the nearest thousandth. This is the number of shares you can purchase. Take the number of shares you have and multiply it by the prices of one share of your stock that you recorded each of the five days. Show work and record this number to the nearest cent. This product tells you how much money your investment is now worth. Calculate the difference between your initial investment and its worth after day five. Explain if this difference represents you earning money or you losing money. Show your work.

45. Tic-Tac-Toe • For an upcoming unit of study, create a tic-tac-toe board. • You will get 15 minutes to get started!

46. Jeopardy Reviewing our Learning

47. What percentage of gifted children with an IQ of 130 and above are not meeting standard? • 25 percent • 40 percent • 52 percent • 63 percent

48. D) 63 percent

49. How many states have over half of their children on free and reducedlunch? a) 23 b) 17 c) 15 d) 21

50. b) 17 percent