The Henry Street School for International Studies Chancellor’s Conference Day January 31, 2001

1. The Henry Street School for International StudiesChancellor’s Conference DayJanuary 31, 2001 Focus on performance tasks:How do we design evidence that measures and motivates student learning?

2. The Henry Street School for International Studies community is committed to creating an inclusive environment where students will be full partners in learning literacy and problem-solving skills. We will engage in world issues, languages and cultures to participate as ethical, responsible, local and global citizens.  Our Mission

3. As we talked about on December 20, 2010, students have their job wrong… “Many students emerge from high school as passive processors who simply sop up intellectual input without active response. Some passive learners, although able to scrape by academically, endure chronic boredom in school and later suffer career ennui. Their habit of cognitive inactivity can lead to mediocre performance in college and later on the job.” -- Mel Levine (2007)

4. “Until we start seeing assessments that ask kids to write research papers, ask them to solve unfamiliar problems, ask them to defend their ideas, ask them to engage with both fiction and nonfiction texts; until those kinds of assessments are our state assessments, all we’re measuring are basic skills,” Mr. Polakow-Suransky said in an interview. And the Deputy Chancellor has made clear what we are being asked to do:

5. 1. Interact with the definition for performance task and our Theory of Action: why are we doing this? • 2. Compare our performance tasks from another school, our own, and each others • 3. IN ORDER TO…. • - Revise our performance task so we have ONE working one for the first semester • - Update/modify our Curriculum Maps for Term 2 Summary of Today’s Work

6. A performance task is every student’s opportunity to produce evidence of learning through strategic application to solve relevant problems, make sense of situations, and/or create new knowledge. Our working definition of a performance task

7. “The aim of education is not the ability to acquire and retain information—the traditional formulation. . . [It] is the ability to do something with what you know—to apply information in the search for a solution to a problem or to create new knowledge— [which] creates an expectation of more rigorous forms of accountability and assessment.” -- Making the Grade Evidence of learning

8. CHOICE • AUTHENTIC • GLOBAL • EXHIBITION Questions to Consider for Performance Tasks from ISSN

9. IF staff design rigorous forms of accountability that require student to think creatively and innovatively, test their own assumptions (i.e. perspectives, solutions, interpretations, experiments, performances), and are transparent in terms of how we grade (aligned to rubrics that measure global competence and college readiness) • THEN students will see the relevance of what they are asked to do and have a growth mindset about their work so that they can take ownership of their learning as measured by the performance outcomes. Our Theory of Action

10. Task: Students will create and publish a globally conscious poetry portfolio and perform selected pieces that reflect themes addressed by the Colombian writer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Student portfolios will include three revised creative poems, three explications of selected poems, and a final 2-3 page critique of a selected Latin American poet. • Essential Questions: Why is it important to investigate life and literature with a critical eye? How are the choices that authors make reflective of social perspectives and cultural values? How is reading literature a source of inspiration for the individual? Sample from Henry Street School

11. Using the definition of a performance task and the examples of performance tasks, please edit your own. • Work in a partner to provide feedback. • Return here at 11am to pick up your group for the “tuning protocol” of your performance task. What’s Next

12. “When the child gets into the schoolroom he has to put out of his mind a large part of the ideas, interests and activities that predominate in his home and neighborhood. So the school being unable to utilize this everyday experience, sets painfully to work on another tack and by a variety of [artificial] means, to arouse in the child an interest in school studies.” -- John Dewey (1907) … and it has been wrong for awhile now

13. “When the child gets into the schoolroom he has to put out of his mind a large part of the ideas, interests and activities that predominate in his home and neighborhood. So the school being unable to utilize this everyday experience, sets painfully to work on another tack and by a variety of [artificial] means, to arouse in the child an interest in school studies.” -- John Dewey (1907) … and it has been wrong for awhile now

14. “Research on expertise in areas such as chess, history, science, and mathematics demonstrate that experts’ abilities to think and solve problems depend strongly on a rich body of knowledge about subject area. • However the research also shows clearly that “useable knowledge” is not the same as a mere list of disconnected facts. Experts’ knowledge is connected and organized around important concepts; it is “conditionalized” to specify the contexts in which it is applicable; it supports understanding and transfer rather than only the ability to remember.” (p. 9) What’s the problem?John Bransford Zmuda and ASCD 2010

15. The very processes that teachers care about most—critical thinking processes such as reasoning and problem solving—are intimately intertwined with factual knowledge that is stored in long-term memory… The conclusion from this work in cognitive science is straightforward: we must ensure that students acquire background knowledge parallel with practicing critical thinking skills. – Daniel Willingham From Why Students Don’t Like School (2009)…

16. “Research on expertise in areas such as chess, history, science, and mathematics demonstrate that experts’ abilities to think and solve problems depend strongly on a rich body of knowledge about subject area. • However the research also shows clearly that “useable knowledge” is not the same as a mere list of disconnected facts. Experts’ knowledge is connected and organized around important concepts; it is “conditionalized” to specify the contexts in which it is applicable; it supports understanding and transfer rather than only the ability to remember.” (p. 9) What’s the problem?John Bransford Zmuda and ASCD 2010

17. The very processes that teachers care about most—critical thinking processes such as reasoning and problem solving—are intimately intertwined with factual knowledge that is stored in long-term memory… The conclusion from this work in cognitive science is straightforward: we must ensure that students acquire background knowledge parallel with practicing critical thinking skills. – Daniel Willingham From Why Students Don’t Like School (2009)…

18. Dictionary definition: “to gain knowledge, comprehension, or mastery.” “To learn is an achievement, not just an activity or a process. It does not make sense to say that a student or staff member ‘learned, but did not ‘understand.’ Nor will it do, then, for teachers to say, ‘I taught them, but they didn’t learn.” -- Wiggins and McTighe (2007) What does it mean to learn something?