Graphic organizers for the writing process

The weather here in Chicago  is cold with windy sleet and icy roads. All of my students are walking around with loud coughs, sore throats and bleary eyes.

It must be midterm season!

Students are exhausted from writing their papers and taking tests. Instructors are exhausted from grading said papers and tests. Sometimes it is a pleasant time of year when everyone is starting to get spring fever. However, this year, I’d say that it feels like spring is quite far away!

This academic year my department has been focusing on student writing as our departmental assessment activity. It has been a really interesting process and I’ll share more about that in future posts. I just wanted to share an article I found today about graphic organizers for the writing process. I wish I had seen this earlier in the semester, but I think I will use some of these tools to help students plan and work on their final projects.  It’s from a newsletter from Emerging Ed Tech: Engaging Students and Enhancing Learning Outcomes with Internet and Instructional Technologies, and the article is titled,

“Teaching Writing and Learning with Graphic Organizers”

Do you have tools and resources that you regularly use to support student writing? Please leave a comment and share what you use.

Happy grading everyone!

I’m continuing to explore the flipped classroom model in my own teaching and thought I would share this week’s reflections with the ACCESS community. What do you think of the Flip?

Carrie's Blog

With the flipped classroom model, the goal is to free up time during class sessions in order to provide active support to students when they need it. I like the idea of active support because this is how it feels to me during the class sessions.

Before our class, I had already sent out two video clips about the Teacher Research Project (data collection, Teacher Research Showcase) and a Prezi for this week’s lesson. During class time,  students began working on their quizzes, and I spent some of that time typing feedback on their quizzes from last week in Blackboard. As students transitioned from the quiz to their work, I began moving around the room and these are some of the things we worked on:

• A small group of students were concerned that they were not writing their field notes appropriately. I was able to talk with…

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Carrie's Blog

I have been moving in this direction for the past year, but after a discussion with my Saturday students this week, I’ve finally decided to more formally adopt a flipped classroom. For an overview of the flipped model, check out “The Flipped Classroom Infographic”.

The following definition is from Michigan State University’s Office of Faculty and Organizational Development:

In “flipped classes” students use technology at home to watch online video lectures, demonstrations, and explanations of assignments.  Class time is spent doing what is traditionally called “homework.”  The teacher in a flipped classroom is a learning facilitator, able to work one-to-one with students, clarify assignments, and offer help as needed.  Classmates can work together on in-class assignments, engage in discussions, or collaborate on projects.

A major benefit is that teachers spend more time working directly with students instead of lecturing to them.  The downside is the need for access to…

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Engaging students in reading the text

A weekly quiz on the reading assignment – what do you think?

For years, I have based many class discussions and activities on the assumption that my students will have read the assigned reading before coming to class. In reality, some students had perhaps started reading, but many of them seemed to be totally unaware of the readings at all. So, I started asking them questions about how they approached the reading assignments. What did they do? How did they spend time that week preparing for class?

Students would often tell me that they tried to read on the train or bus – I teach and live in the heart of Chicago and most of my students take public transportation. They also described reading late at night once their children were in bed, or on breaks at work. It became clear to me that very few students spent more than 15 minutes at a time trying to read the text. That was useful information.

To me, it sounded like they were skimming for main ideas rather than spending time getting immersed in the text. I also got the sense that they did a rather passive job of reading. They were not looking for anything in particular and they seemed to be waiting for the main ideas to pop out at them. I did not get the impression that students were using the text as a tool for learning. Maybe, to them, it just felt like a chore that never got finished each week.

At some point, I just accepted that this is the way it is. Students don’t read assigned readings and there is nothing to be done about it! I have heard many other instructors, across various disciplines, say the same thing. Students don’t read. Students are not prepared for class discussions. We would sigh and shrug our shoulders, and say things like “what can you do?”

About a year ago I tried something I never thought I would do – weekly quizzes. I never liked the idea for a variety of reasons: 1) it would be a lot of grading and I’m already swamped with grading, 2) I’m not an experienced test writer so I’m not sure of the best method for designing such a thing, 3) it seemed like busywork, 4) it seemed punitive. I also thought the students would hate it and that I would lose their trust which is something I work hard to build in the first weeks of the semester.

However, it bothered me that students seemed to feel that doing assigned reading was optional. It’s not.

But, I tried it anyway.

In the next few posts, I will share the process with you. I’m going to try to do some reflecting on the process – something I teach and teach and teach, but do not do enough of myself! I hope you will join me and share your reflections too!

For now, I’ll leave a quote from one of my student’s quizzes about Vivian Paley’s book A Child’s Work: The Importance of Fantasy Play.

This book made me realize that fantasy play has a big impact on how children grow. It helped me to want to start opening my eyes and see what children are doing while they play and to really listen to them because children do have a lot to say especially while playing and we as teachers can really learn from what they are doing. It taught me that I shouldn’t worry about what messes they are doing but to let them explore because by always being behind them cleaning up I’m limiting their imagination which also means that I’m not really even paying attention to them.

This was my feedback on the quiz:

I used to do this a lot too! I was always worried about mess. If my room was messy, I thought that meant I was not a good teacher! It helped me when my director told me to stop and observe.

The conference begins

The day started off early with an 8am session for which I served as a discussant entitled, “Higher Education for Improving Teaching Practice and Outcomes for Children: Taking Paths Toward Greater Effectiveness”. The presenters were Marilou Hyson, Diane Horm and Pamela Winton and fellow discussant was Terri Swim.

The session began with a description of the settings and contexts for Higher Education today and went on to discuss the following:

• Program content
• Standards & Accreditation
• Delivery systems
• Faculty in ECE programs
• Assessing the impact of Higher Education

I enjoyed participating in this session as it was organized in such a way that the presenters, discussants, and audience participants were all actively engaged in the discussion. Some of the topics were depressing to say the least but we were able to share and hear about many innovative pockets in teacher education and that was promising indeed.

In the afternoon, we all gathered together to hear the Plenary speaker. I’d like to save that for another post. I will say that I found it inspiring as well as intriguing. More to come!

ACCESS Board Retreat 2012

What a full day!

The ACCESS Board started out bright and early this morning for our Retreat. We will have an official report from the meeting posted in the ACCESS member section of the website once we all return home, but I thought I’d just share some of the highlights.

We spent some time thinking about our purpose and the mission of the organization and then we spent some time really analyzing our roles on the board, how our responsibilities overlap, and where we need support.

We used large post-its, small post-its, and a variety of shaped sticky notes to help us organize our thinking and to create a visual representation of our work.

Accomplishments since the 2008 Board Retreat

Arranging our roles and responsibilities

There were some short games that got us thinking about how to infuse a playful element to what we do.

I really liked the balloon toss! Nancy played some music and we began to toss one balloon among the group. Each time she stopped the music we had to add one more balloon and continue to keep them all off the ground.

one balloon

Pretty shortly it became a challenge to keep all the balloons in the air and we really had to work together to keep things afloat!

many balloons

I think we did some very good reflecting, thinking, and planning in order to continue to serve the mission of the organization as it moves to the next stage of its development. We worked hard together over a long day and you will hear more about the strategic plan as we move through the summer and prepare for the fall.

Personally, I think the balloon activity will stay in my memory as a visual (and motor!) representation of how the ACCESS Board and, in fact, how the ACCESS organization works:

We wear many hats and play many roles

We always have lots of balls in the air

We tend to have fun together

We work as a team to help each other to keep things afloat

At the end of the day, we shared a meal together and then went our seperate ways. I took a little walk around the downtown area and this is what I saw:

I want to thank everyone who participated in the Retreat today. You all are troopers!

I also want to give a very special thank you to Nancy Beaver, President Elect, for suggesting that we have the Retreat and then for planning and facilitating everything for us. This was a very thoughtful, supportive, and productive day. I also want to thank Judy Sherwood for sending lovely decorations and treats for us even though she could not be there in person.

Stay tuned for more information about the 2012 ACCESS Board Retreat in upcoming communications.

Greetings from Indianapolis!

I had the pleasure of driving from Chicago to Indianapolis today. It was actually a lovely drive. I enjoyed seeing lots of soybean fields and a rather picturesque field of wind turbines.

The ACCESS Board is meeting tomorrow for what we are calling a “mini” retreat. The last time the board had a retreat was in New Orleans in 2008. Many of the current Board members were new Board members back then, some of us have changed roles on the board, and some folks have moved on to do other things as members of the ACCESS community.

Retreats are a good time for reflection. Like the retreat in 2008, we will spend time thinking about the ACCESS history and thinking about our mission and the current direction of the organization. I’m excited to start off the 2012 Professional Development Institute with some concentrated time with the Board to really dive in and do some strategic planning. As I face the last leg of my Presidency it’s so nice to be able to take the time to reflect on where we have come, and to plan the next steps of where we need to go!

If you will be at the conference, I certainly hope you will come to the 2012 ACCESS Day on Monday. I always look forward to seeing folks in person during our twice-per-year face-to-face time!

As always, I will try to blog throughout the week to share what we are working on and continue the discussions online so everyone can join in the conversation. I look forward to talking with you!

Downtown Indianapolis

Report Writing Day Two

We had our second SKiP call this afternoon on the topic of writing annual accreditation reports for the ECADA process. Today, there were eight people on the call from South Carolina, North Carolina, Illinois, Arizona, Idaho, and Alaska.

We started off talking about how participants are getting used to using their rubrics and collecting data. It does feel a bit overwhelming at first! Many people on the call talked about the importance of thinking about this as an ongoing process. We want to have everything finished and prepared, yet the process and procedures need to be fluid enough so that we can make changes based on the assessment information we are gathering. I think that really is the key to it all – easier said than done, I know!

There were a couple folks on the call who use online data collection and storage systems such as TaskStream and LiveText which work very well in terms of collecting, analyzing and storing assessment data.

Others use a simple Excel spreadsheet. For example:

The coordinator provides the spreadsheet template to all instructors and they enter the data and submit it back to her. It has one page with total grades for each assignment. One page has attendance. The third page has the break down of the key assessments and the fourth page is looking at some questions she asks about their class for that semester. She uses this for NAEYC and regional accreditation. The instructors have become familiar with submitting the data to her each semester as it is part of their routine. The coordinator can then run reports and look at the averages and so forth.

I will share that I have explored using SurveyMonkey to collect assessment data from multiple instructors. I use the professional account to create surveys that correspond with our key assessment rubrics and then instructors use a link to the survey to enter their data. Feel free to take a look at this DEMO survey which illustrates our key assessment on documentation. It is just a demo so feel free to interact with the survey to see what it is like to enter data this way. Below, is an example of a chart I generated from the survey results one semester.

People chatted about what they have found in their data so far. One person shared that once they could see what the data were telling them, they were able to add learning opportunities throughout the program that would help students build the skills they need in order to be successful with the key assessments. For example, someone talked about noticing that the students’ planning skills were weak during the practicum semester. They decided to build-in additional learning opportunities around planning earlier in the program in order to scaffold students through that planning process and she has noticed an improvement.

One process that was shared is that once the data are collected, a report is sent out to all faculty who examine the results and then discuss what it means to them and how they will make use of the data to make changes.

Question:

One question that was asked had to do with faculty buy-in to the accreditation process with a particular concern about adjunct faculty. I shared that we have done orientation sessions for our faculty where we invited everyone to attend and I did a workshop on how to use the key assessments. This was an important step when we were introducing an online data collection system as many of our adjuncts were uncomfortable with learning this new step.

I have also found that partnering with the adjuncts one-on-one has been an effective strategy. We have a big enough program where we decided it was best to develop a faculty partner system. Each full-time faculty member partners with a small group of adjuncts. The partnership is usually based on scheduling so it is convenient for partners to meet together before or after their classes. This provides a good opportunity to build a learning community that includes full-time and part-time instructors. We also do a lot of outreach to adjuncts to ask them their opinions about the rubrics – do they make sense? are they helpful? are there pieces we should change? do you see connections between what you are doing in class (learning opportunities) and what we are asking for in the key assessments?

Based on those conversations, we made a major change to one key assessment. Initially, we had an assessment that focused on activity planning. After discussing this with our adjuncts who all work in the field, we learned that what is really needed is for ECE teachers to understand how to critique lesson plans so they can be a good judge of whether or not the plans are developmentally, culturally, linguistically, and ability diverse – for example. We changed our whole key assessment and now call it the “Lesson Plan Analysis” rubric. Students analyze lesson plans and the instructors assess their analysis using the rubric.

Kathy Allen, VP of Collaborations and facilitator of these SKiP sessions, has shared more reflections below on how she is using the assessment report system. This was really generous and I’m grateful to be able to examine how she reports her data.

Here is the document: Examples of data we have collected over the years.

The message below is from Kathy:

The example report found in the link above is organized by standard and is broken out by key element for each standard. In this report you can also see what key assessment is addressed.  If a key element of a standard is addressed more than once in the key assessments, it will appear how ever many times it is assessed. For example- Key Elements 1a and 1b are both in the Lesson Plan Unit and the Child Case Study.

So this report shows us both how students are doing on the standards and also on the assessment itself. For example- Students are performing better on key element 1b in the Child Case Study (89%) than they are on 1b in the Lesson Plan Unit (83%). If this were a significant difference we would take a look at the Lesson Plan Unit and how we could give students more opportunities to learn and practice 1b: Knowing and understanding the multiple influences on development and learning.

What jumps out at me when looking at this data:

Standard 3b:  78% – This is low, and it’s also only assessed one time over the five key assessments.

This means we need to discuss as a faculty what we are going to do to provide students more learning opportunities to practice knowing about and using observation, documentation and other appropriate assessment tools.

We are in the process of switching all our assessments over to the 6 standards so when we revise the key assessments we will include at least one other opportunity to assess 3b along with looking at our learning opportunities chart and see how we can provide more practice.

Also, as we look at revision of the key assessments in our program our goal is to have each key element and supportive skill assessed more than once across all assessments. You can see that that’s not the case right now. So it’s always a work in progress!

Comments? Questions?

Report Writing

I am going to try something new and blog during the SKiP call. I’m not sure if this level of multi-tasking is a good idea for me or not, but I’m willing to give it a try! Today we are meeting together to talk about the process of writing the annual accreditation reports for NAEYC/ECADA. I hope it will be a useful chat session. I have been thinking all morning about this time of year and how difficult it can be to manage all of the deadlines that seem to converge during the spring semester. I know that some folks write their annual reports in the fall and I’m sure that is a very busy time too. In my life, spring is when everything seems to be due – grant reports, budgets, schedules, etc. All projects that have been going on for the academic year must come to some kind of close and there is a saying on my campus that if it doesn’t get done in April, it won’t get done until the fall semester. Maybe that is why there is so much pressure – we need to complete things before we adjourn for the summer session.

Luckily, the annual accreditation report is not that bad..really. I have found that as long as we are collecting assessment data as we should, writing the report is fairly easy. The only trick is making sure that I have enough time to do a good job with the writing process.

Today, we are meeting and there are about 7 people on the call representing several different states including North Carolina, Illinois, Michigan, and Alaska. There is a wide range in terms of the programs represented and their schedule for self-study and annual report writing. Some of us on the call have been writing annual reports for several years and some folks are really just starting the self-study process. It is interesting to have a discussion across this range of experience with the ECADA process.

Kathy Allen is facilitating the call and she is anchoring the discussion to the Accreditation Handbook, which is located in the ICOHERE online community for ECADA participants. This is really helpful as it makes the report seem very “doable”.

There is a specific question about the timeline for transitioning to the revised standards. Kathy has directed folks to the timeline listed on the NAEYC website “Transition to New NAEYC Standards“. Please take a look at this for your reference.

We are now discussing the question of collecting data and thinking about how to interpret different results coming from two different sections of a course. In this case, one section is offered online and the other is offered in a face-to-face format. One wonders if the format contributes to the different data or if it has more to do with inter-rater reliability in terms of instructors using the rubric differently. This is an opportunity for collaboration among faculty. What is the learning opportunity for students to be able to demonstrate this outcome? How much is this activity weighted? Will that weight influence students and their motivation to do their best work on that particular activity? Good questions to think about!

We are now starting to talk about various issues such as when a student fails a course or drops a course – does the data from his/her work still “count”. In other words, is that data included in the annual report? Most folks on the call suggested that the way the data are collected, all data are used in the report. Does this skew the data in any way?

The final note we ended on was a reminder that the self-study and ongoing accreditation process is a strengths-based process. This is important for all of us to remember.

Kathy shared “Examples of data we have collected over the years“, which is a terrific document as it gives us a good example to look at in terms of how one can report on key assessment data.

It was fun to hear various voices on the call and I think the discussion was helpful to all who participated. I look forward to tomorrow’s call!

I hope you can join us!

SKiP call 2012: Reflective Practice part 2

This year, ACCESS is offering 2 opportunities to participate in each monthly SKiP call topic.

Today, we had the second offering of a conference call on Reflective Practice. It was really interesting to talk with a second group of colleagues and explore the different ways people are thinking about reflection: how they are working with students, and how they are working with their partners on campus.

SKiP Call notes: 2/10/12

There were 11 participants in today’s conference call from IA, IL, MA, MO, SC, and NC.

• Linda talked about her concern about how to explain or teach reflection to her students so they can do it better. Participants agreed that having a list of questions is very helpful. Sarah described a protocol that she uses from an article in The ChildCare Exchange magazine, the Tuning Protocol that she finds very useful.  We also asked the question: “When do we reflect?” Do we model it? Do our students know that we value it?

• Sandra described how she tries to let her students know why reflection is so important. She reads excerpts from Vivian Paley’s You Can’t Say You Can’t Play as a model of reflective practice.

 

• Elaine discussed her observation that her students seem to have trouble putting their ideas down on paper, and there was a consensus that this is something we all experience. Students seem better able to talk about it. Lisa Talked about a successful strategy she uses to address this using peer review of each other’s writing with a rubric that specifies what to look for.

• Debra talked about an article she just read that describes a reflection strategy involving “well-remembered events” (see reference below). Students write weekly about an event that stands out to them in their student teaching. They must first describe the event, then discuss what they think is the cause/ what influenced the event, and then discuss what the implications are for teaching.  This seems like an interesting approach to helping students reflect on experiences that are meaningful to them.  Sarah suggested that this represents metacognition, and that education today does not support reflection or thinking about thinking, so students do not have experience in reflective thinking.

Carter, K. Preservice teachers’ well-remembered events and the acquisition of event-structured knowledge. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 26 (3). 235-252.

• Ellen described an article that she uses, The Power of Mindful Reflection, and how it talks about automatic thinking we tend to go to what we already know, which helps to explain why students need encouragement to go beyond their comfort-zone and put their ideas out to the group. Someone suggested that we, as professors, also seem to be wary of risk-taking in a group, and that we can be sensitive to this when we wonder why our students might not be comfortable sharing their opinions and ideas.

• A question was asked about using video-taped sessions of students in the classroom as data for reflection. We suggested that the observation protocol submitted by Laurie after yesterday’s SKiP call was a potential tool for this.

• Finally, a participant going through accreditation suggested that the experience of reflecting for the self-study gave the faculty in her program new insight and sensitivity to what it feels like to be required to reflect. The general consensus is the more we reflect, the more we will be able to offer our students opportunities to reflect and to scaffold their efforts.