Learning-Focused Connections
Issue 37:  Week of  February 23, 2009
The LEARNING-FOCUSED Connections Newsletter is a weekly link to exemplary practice and ideas that will help you as an educator to increase achievement in your classroom and school. Some weeks there will be a mix of articles in the mailer; other weeks we will follow a theme. We are all working with the same goal in mind, continuous improvement in student achievement.
In This Issue
How Do Assessment Prompts Promote Learning?
Does a Rising Tide Lift All Boats?
Working with Words
Past Connections Articles
How Do Assessment Prompts Promote Learning?
by Bill Blynt
 
Assessment Prompts are just one of the many new additions to the Learning-Focused Strategies Model. Learn more about Assessment Prompts in the version 7 Learning-Focused Strategies book: Connecting Exemplary Practices in Acquisition Lessons.

It is often difficult to determine if students understand the content or have mastered a skill being taught in a classroom. As lessons unfold, and students become involved, questions develop to which a teacher must respond. These questions may or may not be related to the learning objectives. Although these questions reflect interest in the topic, they may begin to move the lesson into a new direction. To help keep lessons focused on the intended learning outcomes, it is recommended that teachers create, as part of their lesson plan, critical questions that they will ask students at pre-determined times. These questions, known as assessment prompts, should be aligned to the intended learning outcomes of the lesson, reflect the priority of the instruction and serve as a formative check for understanding. The questions should be answered by all students utilizing some type of activity that is designed to prompt a high level of engagement, serve as an opportunity for the student to summarize their learning and be easily checked by the teacher to determine mastery of the content or skill. The information garnered from these assessment prompts will assist a teacher in determining their next step in the learning process. The results reflected in the student responses to the assessment prompts allows a teacher to make 'mid-lesson' changes to their instructional plan to accommodate student needs.

The timely use of assessment prompts should be tied to the attention span of the student audience. Research tells us that the brain can only sustain intensive thought for so long. Students will take a mental break when their attention span is exhausted. Rather than letting them determine when and what they will do during this break time, the use of assessment prompts and the corresponding activities designed by the teacher will structure this time. Managing a classroom is a difficult job. In order to manage the allocated learning time most effectively and get the most from the students, a lesson plan must include this series of assessment prompt questions. These assessment prompt questions must be crafted carefully. If the prompts are aligned to instruction, the student responses will provide the teacher with evidence as to the degree of understanding experienced by their students. To attain a strong match these prompts must be crafted prior to the lesson. They are too difficult and too important to develop as the lesson unfolds. Due to the nature of classroom dynamics, instruction can take unexpected turns. The use of these pre-determined questions and corresponding activities can assist a teacher in keeping the lesson on task and provide evidence that students have attained the intended level of mastery.

In addition to keeping the lesson on task and serving as formative assessment, the series of assessment prompt questions and corresponding activities serves as distributed summarization or practice. The assessment prompts should be questions that are aligned to the lesson essential question. The response to this series of prompts provides students with substantial information or practice and helps them organize the various elements found within the lesson. This should provide them with required knowledge to successfully answer the lesson essential question posed at the beginning of the lesson. Answering the lesson essential question serves as a final check for understanding and a structured process for students to connect and bring meaning to the new information or skill taught in the lesson. It can be predicted that students who are able to respond correctly to the assessment prompts and answer the lesson essential question thoroughly will experience success on any future related summative assessment task.

Check out Connecting Exemplary Practices in Acquisition Lessons to learn more about assessment prompts.
Differentiated Assignments K-5
                                          
Differentiated Assignments K-5

The ultimate guide for providing all students with opportunities to learn! Differentiated Assignments is a practical approach designed to help all students succeed in meeting standards. It targets practical ways teachers can adapt assignments to reach diverse student learning styles, readiness levels, and interests. Teachers learn to plan meaningful short- and long-term assignments for all students in all subjects with minimal time and stress. Provides an opportunity to create assignments using four specific models that can be easily adapted to different subjects. Differentiated Assignments leads to high level of student engagement and success leading to a deeper understanding of the important content and skills required by state standards. Develop tiered activities to differentiate for readiness. This is differentiating without wiping out teachers!


SKU: 345
Categories: Catching Kids Up Collection
Notebook: $35.00

Does a Rising Tide Lift All Boats?
by Carolyn Boyles

In working with schools focused on raising the achievement of their at-risk students, the issue of their district's achieving or advanced students rarely comes up. Rather, the educators are interested in what will address the seemingly overwhelming odds against bringing the struggling students up to grade level. So, we go about our work of examining research based strategies, learning how to teach more effectively, providing students with genuine learning experiences and documenting the evidence of our efforts.

Although I had heard comments about gifted students and participated in the discussions in the past, I was surprised when I heard it recently in a district that was committed to raising the achievement of its at-risk population. The comment was related to what effect all these efforts for the poor students would have on the gifted students. Are we shortchanging those students, and will their achievement eventually suffer?

I was glad the question came up. It led to a good discussion of the contribution of effective teaching to all students. Teachers who know their state's standards are more likely to teach students the curriculum as opposed to teaching their favorite topics, which leaves to chance the coverage of the recommended content. Teachers who plan their instruction with Student Learning Maps are more likely to make instruction more interesting and connected. Graphic organizers help all students make connections and write more precisely. Summarizing is a life skill for us all that is important even after the classroom.

Learning memory skills or how to use new words increases the capacity of all students, even those who seem to know and remember. Of course, extending thinking improves the processing of all who experience thinking in different ways and at higher levels.

When we do implement effective teaching, all students benefit. These are not empty assurances.  An examination of schools working to improve their instructional program by implementing strategies that increase the achievement of struggling students reveals that the performance of all students is raised.  It is not an either/or situation. Instruction is better for all students, and the results prove that!

The rising tide of effective instruction raises all boats (students).

Reference Connecting Exemplary Practices in Acquisition Lessons, and Connecting Extending Thinking for more information and ideas.

Working with Words
by Denise Burson

Empower your students with the knowledge of how words work, using phonics, onsets and rimes, and word study skills. Make this a FUN, interactive part of the day!  The purpose of "Working with Words" is to teach the relationship between phonemic awareness, word recognition, environmental print, and word-building strategies.

One example of "Working with Words"  is an activity where the class chants the words for the week and writes them. This is done to assist struggling readers who may not be able to look at words and remember them. The chant and writing activity provides an opportunity to remember the words as a result of auditory and/or tactile methods.

Ideas for Working with Words:

  • Use rhythm and rhyme
  • Connect with music
  • Bump the words
  • Play WORDO
  • Have scavenger hunts
  • Make a game board
  • Play Challenge the Teacher
  • Count the syllables
  • Build a sentence
  • Play Tic-Tac-Toe
  • Use grids
  • Make Word Wheels
  • Play Verb Charades
  • Make Pull-Throughs
Learn more about working with words and vocabulary activities from Vocabulary Instruction and Vocabulary Development in Language Arts. Another resource is Patricia Cunningham's Working with Words.

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Past Connections Articles
Past Connections articles are available through the archive tool of this newsletter. Please click here to view the resources.
 
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