Can you prepare kids for testing AND teach them to think?

A friend of mine was substituting in a classroom yesterday with students taking a practice NJASK test.  The students were writing in response to an article about changing Pluto’s status from a planet to a dwarf planet.   She was left speechless after reading the students' responses.  They wrote things that were totally off the topic, drew ridiculous conclusions, and most did not answer the question, etc.  She noticed that the students were using an acronym to help them with the mechanics of writing.  The mechanics did not seem to be the problem.  She was really shocked at the student’s inability to come up with reasonable content in their writing.

Community Reading Assignments
In discussing this with a colleague, it was mentioned that a neighboring school starts each week with an article that every student, teacher and administrator reads.   This seems like a pretty powerful practice to me, especially if teachers and students were using a critical thinking process that gave them a common vocabulary to discuss it.  What a great way to get kids reading, give adults connections, start conversations, develop critical thinking (and of course, raise those test scores)! 

SCANning Complex Situations
Having a set of common questions for all complex situations is a great way to get students in the habit of thinking and helping them develop content for their writing.   Who might have a point of view or opinion on the topic?  Who are the stakeholders?  What are some of the issues?  Which issues are most important?  What do you think should be done?  These higher order thinking questions are the basis for SCAN, the critical thinking strategy from TregoED.  (See the issues, Clarify the issues, Ask what’s important, and Now, what should be done?)  Getting kids reading informational text and SCANning is an excellent way to give kids practice for high stakes testing.  Giving them articles with relevance and of high interest is part of the equation.  Many of our students know how to write, they get the mechanics, but how do they learn “what to write?”  That takes some critical and creative thinking.

Technology Makes it Easy
How can teachers fit one more thing in the day?  Why not use social media and discussion platforms to deliver the articles and start the discussions?  Leveraging student enthusiasm for writing in social media platforms, complete with the ability to share and respond to others' writing is a great way to get students enthusiastically contributing.  The benefits are many – students are more engaged, writing for an audience of their peers is incentive for more careful writing, reading other students work gives them models to work from and it is great way to practice reading and writing short constructed responses

The SCAN Tool
Of course, using the SCAN tool at TregoED is the perfect way to get students practicing the steps of SCAN as the questions are built right into the discussion platform.  You just select a scenario (or attach an article), students pick a point of view and they enter the discussion with screen names and avatars.   Using a couple of SCAN sessions within your content area can give students a better understanding of the content area and familiarize them with the questions.    Each one of the steps progresses up the scale of higher order thinking and with student’s playing different roles they support their points of view with gusto!  SCAN has a library of lessons dealing with current events, social issues, history, and science.  These problem-based topics are perfect for getting students to look at other perspectives on hot issues while teaching them a critical thinking strategy. 

Collaborize Classroom
Collaborize Classroom also offers a discussion platform where it is easy to link and article and use the SCAN questions to start the conversation.  Bottom line, kids like to write in this kind of platform, share what they wrote and comment on each others' writing.  Practicing critical thinking with relevant informational text is a great way to get students prepared for those dreadful questions asked on high stakes testing without making them “practice taking the test!"  Technology can make it relatively painless!  A win-win!  

Teachers Value Increases with Technology

I heard a story the other day about a man who slipped a disk when he was young and had extensive surgery resulting in a six inch scar and a six month recovery period (and a whole year out of PE!).  Ten or so years later, he slipped another disk.  This time the surgery was not as extensive, the scar not as long and the recovery period was shortened to a week or so.  Recently a friend of his had the same surgery.  This time it was out-patient, a half-inch incision and back to work two days later.  We all know that there have been great advances in medicine through the wonders of technology, but even more amazing was all three surgeries were by the same doctor.   Of course, we expect our doctors to keep up with all the latest techniques and technology – or be the target of malpractice suits.

The gentleman telling the story (and main character) was Jon Landis, a former educator and Development Executive with Apple Inc. at the recent NJAET conference.  Although I may not have gotten all the details of his story perfect, I did get the point.  His point was that technology has drastically changed the way that we all work and learn.  Teaching is no different.  Technology is not replacing us but making us more valuable.  We cannot stay in the classroom and ignore the communication revolution that is all around us.
Landis pointed out that "your value as a teacher is no longer your ability to deliver content, content is free, content is ubiquitous, content is good."  We may have been replaced as content providers,  however, our job is even more important now.  Students need to be able to digest content, not just spit it back out.  We need to help our students understand the context, take it apart, and reassemble it into relevant connections and original thought.  No easy task.

He is right, of course, content is ubiquitous.  One need only look at the various free offerings from Kahn Academy (over 3000 videos to “Watch. Practice. Learn almost anything for free.”) or through iTunes U (with a growing library of courses and the ability to create your own) to see the overwhelming amount of content our students hold in the palm of their hand.  Class time, then, needs to become the time that students “play” with the content, contextualize, collaborate, apply and synthesize.
This is where having a good grasp on strategies to get our students thinking critically and creatively comes in to play.  We need to become the problem person, not the answer person.  Our classes need to be creative, with hands-on activities and engaging discourse.  I have found that online discussion platforms strengthen engaging discourse by democratizing conversations, allowing every student an equal opportunity to contribute.  These discussions can engage students in powerful ways, providing rich introductions or extensions to course content.

There is great power in using TED talks and activities to get students thinking about further applications and connections to course content.  Integrating tools such as SCAN (with the built in critical thinking strategy and representing different perspectives) and Collaborize Classroom  (with a full library of higher level thinking activities and interactive discussions) gives our students the opportunity to take an active role in their learning and provides teachers with a simple to implement lesson upgrade.

The bottom line is that, we, as teachers need to embrace the technology (As Landis stated “the internet is not a fad”) and adjust accordingly.  Just like our students, we need the time to “play” with all of the great content we receive on good teaching, time to practice, collaborate, and upgrade our lessons.  Start with some simple tools, one lesson or unit, one homework assignment, but get started.

Keeping it Real

Terry was my mentor, my dept chair, my boss, my friend and my partner in crime (we did have a lot of fun!).  He was a master teacher.  He taught me everything I know about getting students engaged in learning.  I am not sure how he would have done up against today’s rubrics, with all the ubd’s, plc’s, and lmnop’s.  I do know that he made a difference in kid’s lives and they learned a lot from him.

Terry was all about keeping it real.  His classroom was outside.  He taught kids about all of the living things around them.  He had bee hives up on the roof of the school.  Children climbed a ladder, donned bee gear and tended those hives.  They laughed if someone got stung.  No one was sued; no one was hurt; kids were excited and amazed.  He had kids make museum collections out of the insects that died in light fixtures.  They mounted them on pins, classified them and displayed them.  He took the class fishing, “dissected” the fish, and cooked it over a fire for them.  He had students pick up rocks in the streams to find and identify the organisms that lived there.  He took them to the ocean with seining nets.   Every day was an adventure in his class.

So I have been thinking about my roots and wondering if technology had somehow led me away from my roots.  Is technology being used to replace real experiences?   Are we still rolling marbles down the ruler or are we watching simulations?  Is technology taking us away from “real science?”  I do believe some companies would love for that to happen.  I also believe that technology can be used to enrich and enhance these activities just as it does with “real” scientists.

Think of all the possibilities that technology can put in the palm of our student's hands (like the tablets now being used by the CSI on TV).    How cool is it that students can document their findings in the field with pictures?  Or record the work of the insects on video?  Or use the internet in the palm of their hands to identify species?  Even Terry Patterson would have liked to watch the blood flowing through the tail of a fish under the microscope up on the big screen!  And he probably would have been proud to have been blogged about!