Unstoppable Learning

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• Gather helpful sample surveys, unit plans, analysis forms, rubrics, templates, and pull-out questions to develop systems-thinking learning environments

F R E Y

THE AGE OF STANDARDS

• Prompt discussion and reflection using the driving questions and chapter takeaways

•

CORE: MEANINGFUL TEACHING IN

• Examine the seven elements of the Unstoppable Learning model necessary for systems thinking

F I S H E R

AUTHOR OF CURRICULUM AT YOUR

• Learn how to become effective systems thinkers that ensure learning schoolwide

LEARNING

—LAUREN POROSOFF MIDDLE SCHOOL TEACHER AND

K–12 teachers and administrators will:

UNSTOPPABLE

“In clear and accessible language, Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey explain that efforts to improve teaching only work when we see our classrooms as systems: every person and process impacts all the others, and seemingly small changes can have large effects on learning. This book is full of practical suggestions and tools that empower teachers to design the whole system— including peer and studentteacher relationships, learning and assessment tasks, and classroom routines—to lead to better learning.”

Every day, teachers and administrators tirelessly work to fulfill their most significant duty: to ensure students learn. In Unstoppable Learning, authors Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey uncover systems thinking as the key to improving teaching and learning schoolwide.

Systems thinking—which involves distinguishing patterns and relationships and thinking through short- and long-term consequences— is critical to creating clear learning targets, preparing and delivering effective lessons, and successfully assessing instruction. To be systems thinkers, educators must understand the big picture of education and the intricate relationships that affect teaching and learning. The Unstoppable Learning model contains seven essential elements of teaching and learning to create a network of interactions that helps teachers and students reach new understandings.

Seven Essential Elements to Unleash Student Potential

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fisher, Douglas, 1965Unstoppable learning : seven essential elements to unleash student potential / Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-935542-73-5 (perfect bound) 1. Critical thinking--Study and teaching. 2.

Reasoning--Study and teaching. 3. Learning strategies. I. Frey, Nancy, 1959- II. Title.

LB1590.3.F547 2015 370.15’2--dc23 2014042098

Solution Tree Jeffrey C. Jones, CEO Edmund M. Ackerman, President Solution Tree Press President: Douglas M. Rife Associate Acquisitions Editor: Kari Gillesse Editorial Director: Lesley Bolton Managing Production Editor: Caroline Weiss Copy Editor: Sarah Payne-Mills Cover Designer: Rian Anderson Text Designer: Laura Kagemann

Table of Contents

About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Introduction: The Business of Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Systems Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Systems Thinking Classroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Systems Thinker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The Unstoppable Learning Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 This Book as a Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

1 Planning Learning

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Who Are My Students? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

How Can I Learn About My Students’ Strengths? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

What Will I Teach? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

How Will I Plan to Teach the Content and Assess Students’ Learning? . . . . . . . .

Do Students Know the Classroom Routines and Procedures That Support Our Ways of Work? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Systems Thinking and Planning Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Takeaways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2 Launching Learning

17 18 21 27 32 39 44 45

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

What Are My Instructional Goals for Students? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Where Are Opportunities to Make Learning Relevant? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

What Misconceptions and Errors Do I Anticipate? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

How Can I Invite Students Into Learning? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

What Expert Thinking Do My Students Need to Witness? . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Systems Thinking and Launching Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Takeaways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3 Consolidating Learning

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

67

How Can I Structure Learning Tasks to Ensure Complexity? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 How Can I Structure Learning Tasks to Facilitate Interaction? . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 How Can I Design Learning Tasks to Foster Independence? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Systems Thinking and Consolidating Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 The Takeaways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

4 Assessing Learning

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

What Will I Accept as Evidence of Student Learning? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 How Can I Determine if Students Are Making Progress Toward Learning Goals? . . . 93 How Will I Ensure That My Assessments Are Valid and Reliable? . . . . . . . . . . 96 How Can I Quickly Check for Understanding? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Systems Thinking and Assessing Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 The Takeaways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

5 Adapting Learning

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

What Actions Do I Need to Take Based on the Student Assessment Data? . . . .

How Can I Differentiate Instruction to Meet Students’ Diverse Learning Needs? .

What Accommodations and Modifications Do I Need to Provide for Specific Students? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Systems Thinking and Adapting Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Takeaways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

.

. . 112 .

121

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128

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6 Managing Learning

How Do I Build and Maintain Healthy Relationships in My Classroom? . . . . . . .

How Do I Respond When Problematic Behaviors Occur? . . . . . . . . . . . . .

How Can I Return Students With Problematic Behavior to Learning? . . . . . . . .

Systems Thinking and Managing Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Takeaways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7 Leading Learning

106

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

132 137 145 149 151 153

How Do I Use Expectations to Improve Learning? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Am I Consistently Present Across Learning Environments? . . . . . . . . . . . .

Am I a Leader? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Systems Thinking and Leading Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Takeaways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Appendix: Driving Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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159 168 170 171

181 189

About the Authors

Douglas Fisher, PhD, is professor of educational leadership at San Diego State University and a teacher leader at Health Sciences High and Middle College. He teaches courses in instructional improvement and formative assessment. As a classroom teacher, Fisher focuses on English language arts instruction. He was director of professional development for the City Heights Educational Collaborative and also taught English at Hoover High School.

Fisher received an International Reading Association Celebrate Literacy Award for his work on literacy leadership. For his work as codirector of the City Heights Professional Development Schools, Fisher received the Christa McAuliffe Award.

He was corecipient of the Farmer Award for excellence in writing from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) as well as the 2014 Exemplary Leader for the Conference on English Leadership, also from NCTE. Fisher has written numerous articles on reading and literacy, differentiated instruction, and curriculum design. His books include Teaching Students to Read Like Detectives, Checking for Understanding, Better Learning Through Structured Teaching, and Rigorous Reading.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in communication, a master’s degree in public health, an executive master’s degree in business, and a doctoral degree in multicultural education. Fisher completed postdoctoral study at the National Association of State Boards of Education focused on standards-based reforms.

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Nancy Frey, PhD, is a professor of educational leadership at San Diego State University. She teaches courses on professional development, systems change, and instructional approaches for supporting students with diverse learning needs. Frey also teaches classes at Health Sciences High and Middle College in San Diego. She is a credentialed special educator, reading specialist, and administrator in California.

Before joining the university faculty, Frey was a public school teacher in Florida. She worked at the state level for the Florida Inclusion Network, helping districts design systems for supporting students with disabilities in general education classrooms.

She is the recipient of the 2008 Early Career Achievement Award from the Literacy Research Association and the Christa McAuliffe Award for excellence in teacher education from the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. She was corecipient of the Farmer Award for excellence in writing from the National Council of Teachers of English for the article “Using Graphic Novels, Anime, and the Internet in an Urban High School.�

Frey is coauthor of Text-Dependent Questions, Using Data to Focus Instructional Improvement, and Text Complexity: Raising Rigor in Reading. She has written articles for The Reading Teacher, Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, English Journal, Voices in the Middle, Middle School Journal, Remedial and Special Education, and Educational Leadership.

To book Douglas Fisher or Nancy Frey for professional development, contact pd@solution-tree.com.

INTRODUCTION

The Business of Learning

W

e are in the business of learning. Simply said, students attend school to learn. Students, their families, and society expect teachers to create environments that facilitate this learning and to plan meaningful lessons that guide students toward increased understanding. Regardless of our role in a school system—teacher, administrator, or related services professional—our first and most important job is to ensure students’ learning.

Of course, there has been debate over the years about what students should (and should not) learn. Society will always debate the content of the learning. As educators, we contribute to that debate, and we work to enact the curriculum that policymakers agreed on. In other words, the curriculum comes alive in classrooms through instruction. It almost goes without saying, but we’re going to say it anyway: high-quality instruction impacts student learning. We believe that teachers matter, and what they do matters most. In other words, we don’t take a passive approach to instruction.

We know that lesson design and delivery are critical. Students learn because their teachers (and those who support their teachers) take the time to plan, deliver, and assess meaningful instruction.

But too often, talented teachers work incredibly hard to improve learning, develop lessons, and check for understanding, with limited results. Equally hardworking administrators, in an effort to support those teachers, attempt to drill down to a specific teaching behavior, such as posting a learning target or increasing student collaboration time. Don’t misunderstand us. We believe strongly that developing lessons, checking for understanding, identifying clear learning targets, and learning collaboratively are all aspects of instruction that matter, but piecemeal approaches to improving teaching and learning are less than effective and often exhausting. In these cases, some students understand; others don’t. Some teachers strengthen their practice; others stagnate.

What’s missing? The short (and long) answer is systems thinking.

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Systems Thinking Systems thinking is the ability to see the big picture, observe how the elements within a system influence one another, identify emerging patterns, and act on them in ways that fortify the structures within. Educators work with human beings, large and small, who operate in systems. Classrooms are systems. So are professional learning communities (PLCs), schools, and districts. Systems thinking is not mechanistic, hierarchical, or reductionist—it’s quite the opposite. Systems thinkers recognize the dynamic nature of the organized groups they operate within and are able to activate the right elements at the right time to reach the desired outcome.

Let’s take a look at the most familiar system we operate within—our families.

Every day, we make decisions about one element of the family system while keeping the ramifications of these actions in mind. For example, noticing the milk is almost gone in the morning might mean going to the store before dinner that night. But you can’t immediately trot off to get the milk if it’s going to result in missing an important meeting at work or getting the kids to school late. Then, there’s the issue of where to put the milk once you’ve purchased it. Leaving it in the car all day is going to result in spoiled milk by late afternoon. As an adult in the household, you have to consider alternatives. Is there someone else who could go to the store? If so, you’ll need to see what his or her day looks like. Could you buy it on the way home from work before picking up the children? This means doing some backward planning to figure out when to leave work and whether that might create other problems. You might reconsider whether it’s vital to get the milk today at all. If it’s not, maybe you’ll plan something else for dinner that doesn’t require milk. In our everyday lives, we weigh the impact of our decisions on other elements of the family system because we recognize that acting on one has a ripple effect on others.

The Systems Thinking Classroom While the systems thinking family is a simple example, the systems thinking classroom is not. The systems thinking classroom requires educators to consider the elements that impact student learning and design structures to leverage these elements.

Classroom instruction and learning does not strictly occur in a linear fashion from the beginning of the lesson until the end. Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi (2014) call systems thinking “a change from seeing the world as a machine to understanding it as a network” (p. 4). This is certainly the case in education, where we have moved from the factory model that described 20th century schools to a 21st century model that calls for students to communicate, collaborate, and engage in critical and creative thinking (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2011). The fundamental difference between these two perspectives is also its strength: people. Outdated pedagogical models

The Business of Learning

emphasized mechanistic aspects, such as time, input, and output. Systems thinking acknowledges that each classroom is an ecosystem nested within larger systems that include not only the school but also families and communities (Senge, 1990).

Classrooms comprise a network of relationships. How people in the system communicate and respond to changes and the network’s sustainability influence whether each relationship is positive or negative. As such, there are four overlaying principles of systems thinking that we must consider when developing a systems thinking classroom: (1) relationships, (2) communication, (3) responsiveness, and (4) sustainability.

Relationships Every classroom contains several younger people and one or more adults, and each develops relationships with the others. Some of these are highly effective and contribute quite positively to the learning environment; a few may be more difficult.

But none of the relationships in the classroom is wholly separate from another. When we praise or reprimand one student, we change the relationships we have with the others, even if it is only in the slightest way. Classrooms are dynamic systems, not static ones. Systems thinking teachers recognize that changes develop every minute of the day and strive to respond to these fluctuations by monitoring the climate of the classroom and acting accordingly.

Communication Verbal and nonverbal communication among members deeply influences systems.

The language we use with students can build a sense of agency and identity or tear it down (Johnston, 2004). We use language to share knowledge and information with one another and to challenge each other’s thinking. In terms of the big picture, the classroom’s physical and organizational structures communicate our expectations and signal acceptable ways to work and collaborate. Teachers in systems thinking classrooms create lines of communication to ensure all community members use language to advance learning. Further, students are drawn back to view events from a larger perspective in order to see how systems develop and change.

Responsiveness There’s an old adage that says you can never dip your toes into the same river twice.

In other words, the environment changes every moment and can never return to its previous state. Systems thinking teachers understand that because learners change each moment, they must be alert and responsive to these shifts. Robert Pianta, Karen La Paro, and Bridget Hamre (2008) call this teacher sensitivity the “awareness of and responsivity to students’ academic and emotional concerns” (p. 3). This sensitivity manifests itself as instructional scaffolding when giving a student just a bit more

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support to reach a new understanding, as well as offering quiet comfort to a student who is upset or frustrated.

Sustainability This final principle concerns the system’s power to maintain and extend beyond the doors of a single classroom. The most concrete example of sustainability is a teacher who is consistent in terms of expectations and procedures. But to be truly sustainable, classrooms need to be nested within a school with common expectations.

In other words, the hard-won progress a teacher attains in one class should not be undone the moment the student walks out into the hallway. It’s difficult to sustain a community of learners that values positive relationships, open communication, and responsiveness to each other’s needs when the larger organizational enterprise does not. Systems thinking classrooms thrive within systems thinking schools.

The Systems Thinker Systems thinkers recognize, create, and act on the elements and structures that comprise a complex system. This is something that comes with experience but also with intention. Nancy talks about her first year of teaching and the confusion she often felt as she attempted to develop an effective learning space for her first graders.

She devoted a lot of attention and effort to setting up a classroom management plan, establishing a schedule and the physical environment, and developing lessons. She had a good foundation in her university preparation work, but it wasn’t enough—it never is. Looking back, she realized that the year never really came together. There were lots of disjointed activities and teaching behaviors that were dim reflections of what she had seen master teachers do. She lacked, as virtually all novice teachers do, the ability to recognize that she was working within a complex system.

Perhaps you’ve had a similar experience. Nancy sometimes jokes that she’d like to write an apology note to those long-ago first graders and assure them she’s a much better teacher now. She’s also grateful to the mentors she had, including the talented teacher next door, her induction program mentor, and her excellent administrators at the school. These people were systems thinkers, even if they didn’t label themselves as such. They possessed the ability to zoom in on details and then zoom out on how those details impacted the overall classroom.

Systems thinkers are able to adopt a broad view of a situation or challenge and then leverage the right elements in order to improve the situation or resolve the problem.

However, systems thinking is more than figuring out the next move. It’s the ability to weigh the effects a move will have on other parts of a system. This is what worldclass chess players are able to do. They can recall boards from previous matches and make decisions based on those experiences and can visualize what a board and its

The Business of Learning

pieces look like even without access to a physical one. What’s more, they are able to recognize patterns, weigh possibilities, and project several moves ahead in the game before making a final decision. In other words, a skilled chess player knows that the thirty-two pieces on the board are not separate entities but rather networks that act on one another. The successful player is the one who orchestrates the pieces’ distinct qualities into a coherent whole. While Nancy saw her first-year classroom as consisting of separate pieces, her mentors saw a unified system.

Systems thinkers, whether they are teachers, students, or formal leaders, engage in habits of viewing situations, problems, and events. They also (Waters Foundation, 2010): • Seek to understand the big picture • Recognize that a system’s structure generates its behavior • Observe how elements within systems change over time, generating patterns and trends • Identify the circular nature of complex cause-and-effect relationships • Recognize the impact of time delays when exploring cause-and-effect relationships • Change perspectives to increase understanding • Surface and test assumptions • Consider an issue fully, resisting the urge to come to a quick conclusion • Consider how mental models affect current reality and the future • Use their understanding of system structure to identify possible leverage actions • Consider both short- and long-term consequences of actions • Find where unintended consequences emerge • Check results and change actions as needed These habits of systems thinking interact with the elements of teaching. Like chess pieces on a board, these elements have distinct qualities, but we believe that a shortcoming in traditional views of classrooms lies in an emphasis on breaking down elements into finite components and sacrificing how the components fit into the whole. While there is value in examining one part in detail, considering the network of interactions helps us reach new understandings.

The Unstoppable Learning Model As we are in the business of learning, we have developed the Unstoppable Learning model to help all educators bring together the four principles of systems thinking to

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meet the expectations of society, our students, and ourselves. As stated previously, every system comprises elements that influence one another to create an outcome, good or bad. At the heart of Unstoppable Learning are seven elements of teaching and learning.

1. Planning 2. Launching 3. Consolidating 4. Assessing 5. Adapting 6. Managing 7. Leading As you work within a network, you cannot leave out one aspect. For example, it’s hard to address rigorous standards without a plan. It’s equally hard to ensure that students develop mastery if we don’t assess them. We see these seven elements as pieces of a systems thinking classroom (figure I.1, page 7). We can focus on various aspects, always understanding that each one impacts all the others.

Planning Learning Educators who seek the big picture of the learning to come develop systems thinking classrooms. They intentionally look for ways to increase their understanding of students by adopting methods to view them from multiple perspectives. The teacher sets the stage for learning by creating an environment in which students thrive. In order to do this, the teacher must know about his or her students as people and as learners. This involves building relationships with them, capitalizing on their experiences, understanding their existing knowledge, and linking content to their values, beliefs, and cultural perspectives. These practices collectively allow the teacher to engage learners through relevance. But this alone is insufficient if the teacher doesn’t deeply understand the standards and expectations for students. Both knowledge of the content to be taught and concomitant sequencing of concepts and skills are necessary for student success.

Teachers build the classroom to develop students’ competence and confidence. This includes a wide range of inputs and processes, such as teacher modeling, collaborative and cooperative learning experiences, and independent tasks. Teachers can’t just lecture at students day after day. Instead, they must plan to intentionally vary the instructional arrangements to promote interaction with the teacher, with the content, and of students with one another. In other words, communication and dialogue lie at the heart of learning.

The Business of Learning

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Adapting

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Figure I.1: Components of Unstoppable Learning.

Students expect the learning environment to be predictable. They want to know the routines and procedures for a given classroom. They like predictability, just like all of us do in our workplaces. Can you imagine showing up to work with different rules and guidelines each day? One day, you have to submit a paper request to have something copied. Another day, you have to ask the office clerk for permission.

Another day, you are required to make your own copies. Another day, you have to submit the request electronically. You get the drift. Can’t you just picture yourself saying, “Just tell me the procedure, and I’ll do it!” It’s frustrating when things change all the time, but that happens in too many classrooms. That’s not to say that a surprise every once in a while is always a bad thing. Good surprises, sprinkled into the routines, can create some energy and enthusiasm for students, but changing things too often is frustrating. Effective teachers establish a series of routines and procedures (Wong & Wong, 2009). This can be as simple as establishing a consistent place for students to submit work. Or it could be the guidelines students use to collaborate with their peers. Beyond the individual classroom, there is some synergy when school becomes more predicable across grades and classes. Of course, teachers will still be individuals who balance both the art and science of teaching. But some things, like

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how to ask for help, can be consistent. When this happens, students spend less time focused on how they are being taught and more time on what they are being taught.

Finally, teachers must determine how to interweave formative and summative assessment experiences throughout each lesson and unit. The best formative assessment practices emanate from a deep understanding of students’ misconceptions and partial understandings that stall learning. Equally important are the summative assessments teachers design to gauge mastery. Without a clear vision of what competence looks like, the teacher is not able to design effective learning. The idea of beginning with the end in mind is not a new one (Stephen Covey, Heidi Hayes Jacobs, Grant Wiggins, and Jay McTighe immediately come to mind). Teachers require a firm grasp of the goals and outcomes of learning in order to shape the sequence of occurrences necessary to reach the destination.

Launching Learning While planning learning is a teacher-based phenomenon, launching learning marks the entry point for students. Students arrive in our classrooms with a host of experiences and background knowledge, and these have a direct influence on their learning.

In other words, they possess a schema about what their teachers will be teaching, as well as how they will teach it, and these existing schemata may or may not dovetail with the content we are teaching. In fact, students are likely to possess any number of misconceptions about a concept that can derail your teaching efforts. Systems thinking teachers anticipate these misconceptions and errors, understanding that learners need opportunities to surface and test the assumptions they bring with them. Doug likes to tell students that if he isn’t provoking errors and causing them to rethink their ideas, then he isn’t doing his job.

Using clearly stated purposes for learning also influences these internal conceptual organizational patterns. These purposes—some call them learning targets, learning intentions, or objectives—alert students to the teacher’s content, language, and social intentions for the lesson. Internally, these can operate in much the same way that a global positioning system (GPS) does for someone who is driving a car, especially in their ability to offer midcourse corrections. Externally, they serve as a means for the teacher to gauge progress formatively.

We talk about purposes for learning because we believe the term more fully describes an essential element of learning: relevancy. The literature on attention, motivation, and interest as influencing factors in learning is extensive, and students report relevance in particular as a vital contributor to their learning (Kember, Ho, & Hong, 2008). Simply stated, when teachers put content into context so students can readily see its applicability, learners are more able to retain information. We aren’t speaking of linking this to goals that are far in the future (we once had a fourth grader ask if

The Business of Learning

the lesson would help him get advanced placement classes in high school). Students have a right to know how they will use the information more immediately, as when a mathematics teacher explains that knowing how to convert percentages and decimals makes it possible to accurately gauge a series of sale prices of items they’ll be determining later in the lesson.

Teachers operationalize these purposes for learning through offering students several practices that provide further context. We don’t want students to experience learning only as a string of lessons. Rather, we want them to be able to see how the daily purpose for learning fits into the overarching goals for the unit. Systems thinking teachers use essential questions and themes to foster inquiry and interest so that students understand the big picture and have an opportunity to change their perspectives. Regardless of the content we teach, we recognize that disciplines are not a collection of loosely related facts but instead are bodies of knowledge that possess unique mental models, ways of organizing information, and methods for thinking critically and solving problems. As systems thinkers themselves, students look for patterns and trends that they can apply to future learning. We further activate students’ learning by helping them weigh what it is they already know against the larger goals or outcomes for the unit through the use of anticipatory activities, such as demonstrations, discrepant events, visual displays, and thought-provoking questions.

Teachers introduce new information in the form of concepts and skills to students so they can witness the teachers’ expert thinking. These practices include direct explanations, teacher modeling and think-alouds, and worked examples. Taken together, the statements of purpose, essential questions and themes, anticipatory activities, and explicit instruction prime student learning for the application and critical thinking that will soon follow.

Consolidating Learning A major feature of any learning event for a student or an adult is the opportunity to consolidate information in order to formalize knowledge. All learning is ultimately social in nature, and as learners, we need others to help us process our thinking.

Students need copious amounts of peer learning time engaged in meaningful tasks (Donovan & Bransford, 2005). Interacting with others allows students to surface and test their assumptions and be challenged in their thinking. In our own classrooms, we have a daily goal of devoting 50 percent of our instructional minutes to peer-topeer learning. It’s a goal, of course, and one that we don’t meet every day. However, mathematics educator Tim Kanold puts us to shame. He says that students should be spending 65 percent of their classroom minutes working with peers in order to meet expectations about mathematical thinking.

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Many of us have discovered that we weren’t aware of our own knowledge and opinions until we engaged in a discussion about the topic with someone else. Conversations have a way of doing that. As we field questions, listen to the perspectives of others, work together to resolve problems, and at times disagree with others, the experience in turn shapes our own knowledge. Students who grapple with a shared task, one that is not easily solved, have the opportunity to merge what they already know with new information. Properly guided, they solidify their practices and identify gaps in their knowledge or skills that will require further action.

Collaborative learning arrangements prepare students to demonstrate independence in their learning. By that, we don’t mean solitary activities but rather self-directed ones. There’s a tremendous amount of self-regulation necessary to be more independent, and interactions with their peers provide students with the feedback they need to do so. As students master shorter collaborative learning events, they steadily build their skills and stamina for engaging in inquiry- and project-based learning with peers.

Think of any major project you’ve performed in your professional life. It probably was accomplished as a group, with each individual at times locating, collecting, and developing information for the group’s use. That’s independent learning—the ability to work collectively and individually to meet a goal.

Watching students actively engaged in collaborative and independent learning provides the teacher with a window to see how students interpret the content. In many cases, teachers know what to expect and what to look for. Wise teachers take what they observe into consideration and ask themselves how this squares with what they expected. They look for the unexpected and note where gaps still exist. These opportunities for student consolidation of knowledge feed directly into formative and summative assessment systems.

Assessing Learning Assessment allows teachers to close the gap between teaching and learning. The only way to determine if students have learned what you’ve taught is to assess them.

There are a number of tools to assess students’ learning, ranging from simply asking them a question to reviewing their work products. But assessing learning is more than measuring. Assessing learning requires collecting data and also acting on those data.

Systems thinking teachers use assessments as a way to check results and change actions as needed. We’ll talk more about acting on the data in the section that follows, Adapting Learning. For now, we’ll focus on assessing learning in terms of data collection.

As we noted in our discussion of planning learning, good planning includes having ideas about the outcomes of the lessons. In other words, teachers should know, from the outset of the unit or lesson, what they expect students to learn and how they will assess or measure that learning. They then enact these plans and routinely

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collect data. It does very little good to wait to assess until the end of the three-week unit. Assessing earlier allows teachers to make adjustments to their teaching. Perhaps students are ready to move on faster than was originally planned, or maybe they are not. By assessing student learning throughout, the teacher can determine if, when, and with whom reteaching might be necessary.

Assessments can be formal or informal and summative or formative. Table I.1 contains some examples of each of these. For instance, a teacher might join students as they work collaboratively in a group, listening for misconceptions and errors. The teacher might use the informal assessment formatively when he or she plans the next whole-class lesson. See, it’s all linked together as part of a system.

Table I.1: Examples of Different Assessment Types Formal

Formative

Analytic writing inventory: Group students for instruction, such as for voice, tone, or organization.

Validated skills inventory: Assign online practice work to individual students.

Summative End-of-unit exam: Cover the

unit’s topic, and calculate a grade.

Group presentation: Use a calibrated rubric to score student demonstration of knowledge.

Informal Check-in: Listen to a group of students, and then provide a prompt based on the errors identified.

Written exit slips: Plan future instruction of misunderstood concepts.

Online discussion board postings: Use as part of a participation grade.

Notebook check: Review a sampling of lecture notes, assignments, tasks, and reflections.

It’s important to match the type of assessment with the lesson and then to decide how to use the findings from that assessment. It’s also important to ensure that the data you collect are as valid and reliable as possible. Teachers should consider the soundness of each assessment they use as student learning is at stake every time they make a decision based on data.

Adapting Learning Collecting assessment information is an important part of the systems thinking classroom, but it is not sufficient. Teachers have to do something with the information they collect. They have to adapt the teaching based on data. That may be as simple as noting a conceptual error and then prompting or cueing students. Or it may be as complex as redesigning lessons that fail to realize the intended learning goals. Acting on the data they collect is a sign of strength, not weakness, in teaching.

High-performance learning environments are data driven and student centered.

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Systems thinking teachers understand the structures of their classroom and use them to leverage actions to achieve desired results.

It’s helpful to remember that students’ responses are perfectly logical to them at the time. These responses reflect their current understanding, and it’s not useful to become frustrated with students who fail to reach the learning target on their first attempt. Instead, these incorrect responses represent an opportunity for growth and learning. It’s what we do after the incorrect response that matters. When students feel ashamed, belittled, or embarrassed because of an incorrect response, they’re not likely to volunteer in the future and are significantly more likely to outsource (cheat on) their assignments (Banfield, Richmond, & McCroskey, 2006). When they copy an assignment from another student, the data you collect are no longer valid. When pleasing the teacher means getting something right the first time, a valuable opportunity for teaching and learning is lost.

As they adapt learning based on assessment data, systems thinking teachers consider the students’ individual needs. There is a wealth of information available about differentiating instruction, focusing on the content, process, or product (Tomlinson, 2014). For example, a teacher may plan a lesson with different texts on the same topic to support a wide range of learners. Another teacher may add manipulatives and multimedia to the lesson to engage more students. Still another teacher may invite students to select from a list of possible projects to demonstrate their understanding.

In addition, teachers can formalize the accommodations and modifications they provide for specific students. Accommodations are changes to the way students access the content, such as large print, audio versions, use of mnemonics, adaptive writing instruments, or preferential seating. For example, a student may use a peer notetaker to ensure that his notes are accurate. In trade, the student may type up the notes for his peer and provide her with an electronic version. Accommodations do not change the curriculum itself but rather the ways in which a student will access that curriculum.

Modifications, on the other hand, are changes to the curriculum itself. Typically reserved for students with special needs, modifications can range from offering a shortened assessment to altering the directions for an assignment. For example, a student’s unit assessment may have two or three choices for each question rather than the five the other students have. In chapter 5, “Adapting Learning” (page 105), we’ll spend more time on accommodations and modifications because they are important aspects of the learning support teachers provide for students.

All of these approaches—scaffolding, differentiating, accommodating, and modifying—depend on the teacher’s understanding of the systems operating in the classroom.

Further, systems thinkers leverage these systems to benefit learners. The ability to do

The Business of Learning

this is a mark of a systems thinking educator who is capable of foregrounding the learner’s needs against the classroom backdrop to make decisions so that both profit.

Managing Learning Systems thinking educators know that the system’s structure generates its behavior. Organization of the physical environment and cultivation of the emotional one translate into spaces where students learn. Systems thinking teachers are also able to consider the short- and long-term consequences of their actions. As well, they actively seek out possible unintended consequences so that they can make corrections.

High-quality instruction is of no use if students are out of control, disengaged, or harmful to others. That doesn’t mean that teachers have to exert tremendous control, exercising their power over students. Too often, we’ve seen a minor situation escalate because the teacher’s response to the student made the situation worse. We don’t mean to blame teachers. Well-meaning teachers have been told to get their classrooms “under control” by equally well-meaning principals. Often, this results in power struggles, and some students are willing to do just about anything to win that struggle. Systems thinking teachers understand that instruction and management are interwoven, and damage to one negatively affects the other.

Teachers who effectively manage learning know that relationships are critical to a network. A majority of students behave and engage in learning when there is mutual respect and caring. In fact, the same student may act differently in one grade level or class simply because of the relationships that have been established. We are not suggesting that teachers become friends with students. Adults are not the peers of children and adolescents. Instead, we are stating that strong, caring, and trusting relationships between students and the adults in the building facilitate learning.

Of course, there are times when preventative approaches fail and problematic behavior occurs. As part of a systems thinking classroom, teachers know how to respond to problematic behavior to renormalize the classroom and make learning the focus once again. Effective classroom management is an important part of teachers’ toolkits. Systems thinking teachers rarely use punitive approaches and see problematic behavior as just one more thing to teach, much like reading, mathematics, fitness, or art appreciation.

Leading Learning Systems thinkers are leaders who regularly examine situations, problems, and events broadly in order to understand the factors at play and their relationships to one another. Everyone reading this book is a leader. Teachers lead their classrooms and their peers. Students lead their own learning and the learning of their peers. Formal leaders lead schools, districts, counties, provinces, territories, states, and so on. In our hearts, we believe that every school community member needs to think of him- or herself

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as a leader. As such, we hope that everyone takes the opportunity to read chapter 7, “Leading Learning” (page 153). We’ll discuss the leadership literature and rich examples and ideas that teachers, principals, curriculum directors, and superintendents can use to create optimal learning and working environments.

Leaders, regardless of position or title, set expectations. They do so through personal example but also through the ways they communicate these expectations explicitly to others. We’re not talking about being overbearing but rather about making your expectations for students, colleagues, and others you supervise heard. Too often, others incorrectly interpret our expectations as advice to be taken or not, especially when we add qualifiers such as “Have you thought about . . . ?” This leaves us feeling frustrated, but that is misdirected. We shouldn’t be frustrated with the individual.

We should be frustrated with ourselves for couching our expectations in misleading language. Our colleague Jennifer Abrams has reminded us on more than one occasion to tell the student or adult, “This isn’t a recommendation or a suggestion. It’s an expectation,” so you convey the message properly.

One of the things we have learned from the business literature is being present (Lunden, Paul, & Christensen, 2000). Teachers have to be present, both physically and mentally, in their classrooms. That’s where the action is. Being present means focusing on students, listening to them carefully to uncover misconceptions and errors, and noticing when there are opportunities to build students’ sense of identity and self-efficacy. It means attending professional development events, grade-level meetings, and collaborative planning events. Being present doesn’t mean that you’re simply seated in a chair, looking at your tablet or smartphone. It means being present, both physically and cognitively.

Of course, leading learning is more than creating student leaders and engaging peers in collaborative work. Leadership also involves creating the culture and climate of the school. That’s not just the superintendent or principal’s job. It’s the responsibility of each and every person who works in the building. This requires moving from examining separate components to understanding the whole. That’s the systems thinking approach to classrooms and schools.

This Book as a Resource This book can be read in a linear, chapter-by-chapter fashion, or a reader can jump to different chapters to sharpen the learning experiences for his or her students. Either way, we believe that each component of the system is important and deserves attention. Therefore, each chapter is devoted to one of the seven elements. Throughout, we’ve also designed fictionalized accounts written from the perspective of teachers and

The Business of Learning

students to illuminate the elements. These scenarios draw from our personal teaching activities and our collective experience working with teachers across grade levels.

Driving Questions Because systems thinking requires seeing the big picture as a whole rather than only attending to its moving parts, we consider the seven elements of the systems thinking classroom from two stances: that of the learner and that of the teacher. A book on teaching and learning simply cannot leave out either of these partners. Therefore, we must consider what occurs on the student side of the learning equation and how the teacher constructs these opportunities to learn.

Each partner in a systems thinking classroom has driving questions that he or she must acknowledge and address. In fact, these driving questions allow members of these networks to keep the big picture in mind because they prompt reflection. Within each chapter, we identify the driving questions that teachers ask regarding each element of a systems thinking classroom, as well as questions that spur systems thinking. The appendix includes these teacher questions and questions students and formal leaders, such as administrators and coaches, ask to support teaching and learning.

Takeaways At the end of each chapter, we’ll conclude with a few major points. These are the big ideas that each chapter explores. Of course, the chapter has more detail than these takeaway points can convey, but we hope these points trigger discussion and reflection.

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CHAPTER 2

LAUNCHING LEARNING

One of our colleagues, Jonathan Mooney, talks about being so intimidated by spelling that he used to hide in the bathroom. When his mom learned of this, she decided to take him to the zoo every Friday of fourth grade so that he didn’t have to take spelling tests. Jonathan’s mom took care of the intimidating experience for her son by removing him from it altogether, but she shouldn’t have had to. Schools should provide a safe place to learn and grow, an ideal learning environment that invites all students into the content they are studying. Teachers’ ability to launch students’ learning is critical to their success.

What Are My Instructional Goals for Students?

In chapter 1, “Planning Learning,” we focused on analyzing standards and designing units of study. Teachers have to turn units into lessons for students, and each lesson needs a learning target or objective. One of the questions students have is “What am I learning today?” Their teachers should always be prepared to answer this question.

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I

ntimidating. Sadly, that’s how some students describe their schooling experiences.

It’s true: teachers can make learning intimidating without ever intending to do so.

Students know that they’re in a given learning situation precisely because they don’t know something, whether that be fourth-grade mathematics, middle school English language arts, or chemistry. They really don’t need to be reminded of that fact. When learners are intimidated, they shut down. We’ve all seen students shut down, too scared to even raise their hand to ask a question.

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Learning Targets

Statement

Learning Intention

Task, Assignment, or Activity

1. Write a summary that includes the major points of the article in chronological order.

2. Illustrate the life cycle of a frog.

3. Analyze a given meal for its consistency with the Food and Drug Administration recommendations.

4. Compare and contrast meiosis and mitosis.

5. Describe the impact of specific literary devices (for example, personification, anthropomorphization, or symbolism) on the readers’ understanding of the text during collaborative conversations as well as in an individual written summary.

Figure 2.1: Sample statements for learning.

Let’s take the first one. It’s pretty clear that it is a task. This allows students to demonstrate their understanding of the article, but they are probably not sure what they learned about the content of the article.

The second provides an idea about what students should learn, the frog’s life cycle, but the main thrust of the statement is about illustrating. Perhaps if the teacher had said, “Today, we’re learning about the life cycle of the frog, and you’ll be able to illustrate the steps in that life cycle by the time we’ve finished,” the students might focus more on the content. That’s not to say that knowing how you are expected to demonstrate your understanding is unimportant. Students want to know that, but focusing on the how in the absence of what (and why, as we will see later) is problematic.

The third statement is better but still has a strong task orientation. Students will immediately start thinking about the meal that they’ll be assigned and how they will

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Learning targets should focus on what students are expected to learn, not only what they are expected to do. Although an agenda can be helpful, and students do want to know what their tasks, assignments, and activities are, they really need to know what they are expected to learn from the experience. Agendas are useful for conveying a schedule, but they don’t convey what the learning is about, only the activity. And as we have all experienced, just because we’re doing something doesn’t automatically mean we’re learning anything. Figure 2.1 contains several statements from a variety of classrooms we have visited. Note which communicate a learning intention and which focus on a task, assignment, or activity. It’s hard, isn’t it?

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analyze it. Focusing on the recommendations themselves would probably be wise.

Then, students would understand why they are analyzing a given meal—to identify whether or not important components are missing or are in excess.

The final example is probably the best. It communicates the learning intention as well as the way in which students will demonstrate their understanding. Students will know that they need to identify literary devices, name them, and then describe their impact with a peer and individually.

Language and Social Expectations Thus far, we have focused on setting expectations for students related to the content they are expected to learn. Having a clear learning target clearly aligned with grade-level standards is an important part of the teaching and learning process. Teaching sixth graders fourth-grade content will create seventh graders who are ready for fifth grade. We have been using learning target, objective, and learning intention interchangeably because they are common terms used in the field. As we will see in the section that follows, we prefer purpose, but that conversation will come.

For now, we want to focus on the fact that there is more to learning than the content. In every learning environment, students have the opportunity to develop their linguistic prowess and their social skills. Having a clear learning target related to the language students need to develop is critical for English learners (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2012), but it’s also important for other students. As students learn more in each discipline—mathematics, history, science, art, and so on—they need to develop the language of the content area. Thinking like a scientist, for example, requires the development of specific language structures and vocabulary. Commonly, teachers consider three factors when developing their language expectations for students.

1. Vocabulary: The general-academic or domain-specific terminology students need to learn 2. Language structure: The grammar and syntax patterns necessary to construct language in a given discipline 3. Language functions: The ways that people use language in a given discipline, such as to justify, debate, describe, define, question, summarize, argue, entertain, inform, or express an opinion

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The fourth statement communicates the learning intention and the fact that there are similarities (compare) and differences (contrast). However, this statement does not inform students about how they will do this. Students are probably going to be thinking, “Do I have to do this alone? Do I have to write this, or will we be using a graphic organizer?”

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Other times, teachers introduce the content and then communicate the language expectations with the word by. This was the case in the final example in figure 2.1 (page 48): “Describe the impact of specific literary devices (for example, personification, anthropomorphization, or symbolism) on the readers’ understanding of the text during collaborative conversations as well as in an individual written summary.”

In addition to language, teachers can establish their social expectations with the class as they communicate the learning targets for the day. When teachers are clear about the expectations they have for student learning, students learn more and better. This holds across content, language, and social domains. Accordingly, it seems reasonable that teachers clearly communicate their social expectations for students. Unlike the content and language expectations, repeat social expectations for several days, or cycle such that on Mondays students focus on one aspect of their group work, on Tuesdays they focus on a different aspect, and so on. For example, teachers may establish the following social learning intentions.

• Practice active listening as you complete your collaborative learning activities.

• Take turns talking in your group.

• Use “I” statements when talking about your feelings, experiences, and opinions.

• Respectfully agree and disagree using academic language.

Some teachers use a character education program (see Lewis, 2005) to identify social expectations. Other teachers meet with their grade-level team and agree on social behaviors that their students need to develop.

SMART Goals There has been a lot of attention given to making learning targets or objectives SMART (Conzemius & O’Neill, 2014; O’Neill & Conzemius, 2005; Schmoker, 1996), which stands for:

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Sometimes the language learning intention is a sentence separate from the content learning objective, as is the case when a world history teacher says, “Today, we’re focused on identifying causes of World War I. By the end of class, you’ll be able to identify several contributing factors that led the world to war. At the time, it wasn’t called World War I because they didn’t know that there would be a second world war. In terms of the language goal, I’d like you to focus on justification. You should be able to justify, in writing, how each factor contributed to the start of the war.”

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Strategic and specific Measurable Attainable Result orientated Time bound

• At the end of three weeks’ instruction, 85 percent of the third graders will score proficient or advanced on the chapter assessment on multiplying and dividing within 100.

• By October 15, all students enrolled in tenth-grade English will produce a written response to the essential question that averages across the five indicators at least 4.0 on our five-point rubric.

This method of goal setting can be useful for students as well, especially in helping them establish their own goals: “I will be on time for English class each day for the next nine weeks.” However, these types of objectives are less valuable on a daily basis because they don’t alert students to the content targets. The problem then is when teachers write SMART objectives for their units of study for planning purposes but do not drill down to the daily learning targets that alert students.

Daily learning targets, when combined with SMART goals for unit planning, are necessary because they invite students into learning. They also help teachers plan in regard to the limited number of minutes that they are allocated each day. In addition, these daily learning targets allow the teacher to identify appropriate assessments to determine which students have mastered the lesson’s content and which still need more time and instruction. Without a daily target, teachers may not check for understanding or identify necessary reteaching or accelerated learning opportunities for specific students.

Where Are Opportunities to Make Learning Relevant?

There is a lot of talk about rigor (see Fisher & Frey, 2012b; Kanold, 2012). Rigor is a combination of high standards and learner expectations paired with challenging task demands that result in student application of knowledge using critical-thinking skills within and across disciplines. And who doesn’t want to raise the rigor of learning for students? Having high expectations, and pairing them with scaffolded and systematic student learning and assessment, results in better performance. But simply assigning students hard tasks isn’t an effective way to increase the rigor of the classroom. As

© 2015 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

To our thinking, teachers can develop SMART objectives (or goals) at the unit level. For example, consider the following goals.

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Raymond McNulty and Russell Quaglia (2007) note, there is a connection between rigor, relevance, and relationships. You must first pay attention to the relevance of the content and the relationships that students have with one another and their teachers before you can raise rigor.

There are a number of ways to make learning relevant for students. The most obvious is when the learning connects to something students need to know outside of the walls of the classroom. For example, when a geometry teacher tells students that volcanologists use the midsegments of triangles to measure volcanoes and that building props for a play requires an understanding of the triangle midsegments so that the visuals appear proportional, students pay close attention. Older students like to know what they’ll need to know for college, jobs, and careers.

Application outside of the classroom is not the only way to make learning relevant.

When learners have the opportunity to learn about themselves, the content is highly interesting and relevant. For example, when a fourth-grade teacher tells his students that everyone can have different writing styles and processes, he piques their interest. When a middle school science teacher tells her students they will develop their problem-solving and detective skills, the students excitedly get to work on their lab.

A second grader may like similes because they make his stories more entertaining, which allows him to care about his learning, as well as his readers.

Lastly, teachers can establish relevance by talking with students about societal expectations. Society expects them to have certain knowledge for college and careers.

Government-mandated standards and standardized tests set teaching and learning expectations in schools. Making students aware of these and other societal expectations helps them see the relevance in what they are learning. Doug likes to say to high

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It’s one thing to have a clear learning target and another to make it relevant to learners. To our thinking, this is a missed opportunity to launch (and sustain) learning. As we have noted previously, students want to know what they are expected to learn as well as how they are expected to demonstrate that learning. Perhaps even more importantly, they want to know why they should learn the content. Actually, it’s more than just students. It’s all of us. Every time we’re in a learning situation, we assess whether or not the learning is relevant. The difference is that we get up and leave (or check Facebook) when the learning isn’t relevant. We’re always searching for ideas that meet our needs and that are relevant for the questions we have right now. That’s actually the way our brains work, as we are wired to attend to perceived meaningful events, and turn our attention away from irrelevant information—it’s a survival mechanism (Gazzaniga, Ivry, & Mangun, 2009). That’s why we prefer the term purpose rather than learning target, learning intention, or objective. We want to make sure that the learning we expect students to do is relevant.

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school students, “You need to know this because you’ll be able to vote on my Medicare benefits soon!” Educated people can think about critical issues in sophisticated ways, and students will be expected to do the same.

What Misconceptions and Errors Do I Anticipate?

Having a clear learning target and being able to communicate that target are important aspects in launching learning. We’ve already discussed a number of reasons why this is important, but there is one more. When the learning target is clear, teachers can anticipate errors and misconceptions. This helps with lesson delivery because teachers can teach against the errors they expect students will make and confront the misconceptions students are likely to hold. As we learn more about our students and groups of students at a given age or as they learn specific content, we get better and better at anticipating errors and misconceptions. It’s part of what makes an expert teacher great.

Misconceptions and Errors Misconceptions are false beliefs or assumptions that students possess in advance of instruction. Students often fiercely cling to misconceptions even in the face of new information that contradicts their beliefs. A few examples of student misconceptions follow.

• Veins in the circulatory system are blue; arteries are red.

• The tongue has specialized zones to detect bitter, sour, sweet, and salty flavors.

• Sir Walter Raleigh introduced tobacco to Europe.

• There is no gravity in space.

• To multiply by ten, just add a zero.

Simply pointing out the misconception and telling students they are wrong will not get them to retain the new information. They need to also know why the miscon-

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Although we believe that teachers should post the purpose statement and revisit it several times during a lesson, relevance is more of a conversation in the classroom.

For example, as students in a seventh-grade art appreciation class view an image of a famous painting on the screen, the art teacher refers to the purpose on the dry-erase board: “Identify the unique features of cubism by analyzing paintings and listing the features.” In the class discussion, the art teacher says, “Cubism is kind of strange, or it was when Picasso and Braque invented it. Now museums are filled with cubist art.

There are a lot of graffiti artists who incorporate cubism, not to mention Shepard Fairey, who created the brand Obey.” These few sentences invite students into the lesson and provide them with some context for their learning. We might even go so far as to say, if you can’t find relevance in a lesson or topic, why are you teaching it?

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Errors, which are closely related to misconceptions, are the result of inattention to proper details. When people are learning a new skill or concept, they can fail to pay attention to the right things and therefore perform incorrectly. For instance, when you first learned how to drive, you probably took awhile to get the hang of checking the mirrors frequently enough without driving off the side of the road in the process. You knew it was important to check the mirrors and steer, but you hadn’t quite developed the ability to do both simultaneously. Errors can similarly occur when students are learning new information and momentarily overlook previously learned concepts.

Elementary students learn to vertically line up two-digit mathematics problems to compute an answer but may experience a bit of trouble doing so when the problems require renaming. Being able to anticipate this error means that you can teach directly toward it and potentially stave off problems. Systems thinking teachers surface and test the assumptions of learners in order to cause them to consider information in a new light (Waters Foundation, 2010).

Challenges to Anticipating Misconceptions and Errors The ability to anticipate misconceptions and errors in advance of instruction is an acquired skill and not one that is based simply on years of experience. This skill requires examining the discipline-specific research on predictable misconceptions, a willingness to formulate hypotheses about students’ learning, and the abandonment of the notion of error-free learning. The fact is that errors are an essential part of the learning process. If a lesson is error free, the student probably already knew the information before instruction even began.

Know Misconceptions Research All subjects and disciplines have predictable misconceptions associated with them and accompanying research about their existence and ways to address them. The fields of social studies, science, and mathematics, in particular, are replete with research

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ception is incorrect. Take that last example: to multiply by ten, just add a zero. This strategy actually works when students are younger and only handling whole numbers, but it falls apart the day they meet a fraction that has to be multiplied by ten. This misconception is further complicated by a related misconception that multiplying always results in a larger number. Students need time to resolve this issue. Multiplying fractions with whole numbers is typically taught in fourth grade, and students’ misconceptions may be built on wobbly third-grade mathematics understandings.

Models and manipulatives are definitely called for in this case, as students will benefit from first gaining a firmer footing about what fractions represent concretely. By leading students systematically through a sequence of steps where they get to see what happens to the physical representations of these abstract concepts, they are better able to change their assumptions that led them astray.

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on misconceptions (for example, Mueller & Yankelewitz, 2014), and national and international discipline-based organizations have many resources about misconceptions. Some informal searching online will almost certainly result in any number of resources about student misconceptions. When teaching a grade level or course, it is wise to consult these in advance so that you can become familiar with misconceptions your students are likely to hold.

As teachers, we’re always observing students, but your awareness of student misconceptions is going to skyrocket by routinely posing a seemingly simple question to yourself: “What does that student know and not know at this moment that would cause him or her to answer or perform incorrectly?” Students rarely furnish an answer that is entirely unmoored from any knowledge base, and incorrect answers are a good place to start digging around for misconceptions and common errors.

This is far more sophisticated than simply deciding whether an oral or written reply is correct or not. Make a habit of spending a few minutes at the end of the week thinking about any error patterns you detected, and record your speculations using the audio-recording feature on your smartphone. Over time, you’ll find that you’re better able to anticipate in advance when students will have difficulty, allowing you to address the misconceptions directly.

Acknowledge the Expert Blind Spot We’ve all been around someone who knew a lot about a topic but couldn’t explain it in a way we could understand. In teaching, this is referred to as the expert blind spot and describes instances when a teacher’s content expertise overshadows his or her pedagogical knowledge (Nathan & Petrosino, 2003). Although we possess a high level of content knowledge, significantly more so than our students, that very expertise we value can diminish our ability to put ourselves in the learner’s shoes. In other words, we have often possessed conceptual knowledge for so long that we have forgotten what it is like to encounter these concepts as novices. Closely observing students at work, coupled with formative assessments that provide teachers with examples of student understanding in progress, can sizably reduce the expert blind spot.

Abandon the Myth of Error-Free Learning We’ll put it as bluntly as we can: it’s impossible for every student to learn everything you hope for on the first try. Making errors and learning from them is an integral part of learning. We will often tell our students that a major responsibility for teachers is to provoke errors, and if they haven’t made one on a given day, then we’re not doing our jobs. However, because students can cling to misconceptions with a surprising level of tenacity, it is important to address them.

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Observe Students Closely

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How Can I Invite Students Into Learning?

Much of what we have discussed thus far in the chapter has concerned those behindthe-scenes considerations of effective teachers as they launch a lesson or unit of study.

Ultimately, the launch happens in front of students as we invite them to join in on the learning. These methods of conceptually opening lessons and units of study build cognitive bridges to future learning.

One important element of learning is attention. After all, if students aren’t paying attention, how can they process new information? When we talk about attention, we are not referring to behavior management but rather to practices that elicit curiosity, provoke questions, and evoke recall of newly learned information. In addition, attention means activating students’ background knowledge about the topic. This is really the very beginning of the learning process, although it is not bound in time to the beginning of a course, unit, or lesson. Therefore, launching learning activities should be tied to the introduction of new concepts and not simply to the first five minutes of a class period. Effective teachers create memorable events throughout their lessons to capture student attention. However, it is important to note that gaining attention is intended not to provide entertainment for students but to scaffold learning so that the cognitive responsibility for learning shifts to the student. A primary goal of classroom instruction is to move from teacher-directed instruction to student-centered learning. Launching learning activities can ground new learning in meaning-based inquiry because the student’s attention has been gained through an event connected

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Anticipating errors is not solely a means to prevent them from ever occurring. Often, teachers will allow students to make expected errors precisely so they can seize the teachable moment. We’ll use English as an example. We love the short story The Children’s Story (Clavell, 1964), and Doug reads it aloud every year to his students.

The author’s tale of a day at school after a military invasion when the children are gently but effectively taught to abandon their beliefs about family and freedom is chilling. It ends with a twist that catches readers off guard. However, we would never dream of interrupting their erroneous thinking as they listen to the story. For example, after the first couple of pages, many students think that the young new teacher is a welcome replacement. A few pages later, students often think that the teacher is right about wishing and praying for things. That would defeat the point—we want them to experience that cognitive dissonance. Anticipated errors can work in a similar way. Often we allow errors to occur so we can discuss them and provide new information that is more meaningful and relevant. This requires a safe learning environment where students understand that errors are a useful part of learning and not something shameful. The only error, if you will, is in not recognizing how to use anticipated errors to leverage new learning.

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to the purpose for studying the topic. These memorable events may even use drama, humor, movement, or emotion to make an impression on learning.

Paul Eggen and Don Kauchak (2001) suggest four categories of memorable events for launching learning.

1. Demonstrations 3. Visual displays 4. Thought-provoking questions

Demonstrations Classroom demonstrations typically display a theory, concept, or phenomenon. A demonstration of gravity is likely to involve dropping objects from a specific height; a demonstration of fractions and decimals might include several apples sliced into equal parts. Don’t overlook the availability of technology to enhance demonstrations of complex phenomena. We particularly like websites that portray scientific concepts. For instance, students can watch how an earthquake occurs, see the phases of the moon change, or dissect a virtual frog. One of our favorites is Visual Thesaurus (www.visualthesaurus.com), which displays a semantic web of related terms organized by meaning and usage. Teachers at our school use the app Educreations (www .educreations.com) on their tablets to project diagrams, photographs, and such, while illustrating them to highlight important features. Using demonstrations to illustrate and augment lectures and readings is particularly effective for students with special needs and English learners because content learning can be enhanced by physical and kinesthetic involvement.

Use demonstrations judiciously in order to prevent confusion. In particular, a demonstration is likely to fail if it is not grounded in the theoretical framework. An interesting demonstration does not replace the need for deep exploration of concepts.

Also, don’t overlook the importance of telling students that the demonstration is important to remember and why. These simple statements of emphasis are effective when coupled with demonstrations.

A jaw-dropping demonstration can provoke wonder and inquiry and establish real purpose to the subsequent study of a specific concept. These memorable occasions can use the element of surprise to shift the events to long-term memory. If they are visual displays, they can activate memory and retention through motion and light.

While chemistry teacher Marsha Matheson introduces the rules of the class, she pours a small amount of isopropyl alcohol into an empty five-gallon water cooler container. Without explanation, she lights a match at the mouth of the jug and a loud boom results, along with startled gasps and squeals from her students. She then

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2. Discrepant events

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instructs them to quickly write about what they have just witnessed. After inviting responses from the students, she prompts a discussion on the difference between an explosion and a burn, terminology many of them have just used interchangeably. Ms. Matheson then gives her students a few minutes to revise their writing using accurate vocabulary and reviews the rules again, reminding them that they exist for the safety of all. Finally, she moves in for the final point—“Chemistry is a blast!”

Discrepant Events Discrepant events are those that include a “counterintuitive outcome [that] creates cognitive disequilibrium that temporarily throws learners mentally off-balance” (O’Brien, 2010, p. xi). A performance may be staged—for instance, another teacher may be recruited to rush into the classroom to hand the world history teacher a copy of a newspaper dated December 7, 1941. Attention is directly related to schema, the knowledge structure we use to comprehend. Events such as these can assist students in organizing new information, integrating it with prior knowledge, and increasing their ability to retrieve it later.

Discrepant events also access a powerful aid to memory—emotional connection. As humans, we tend to recall episodes connected to our emotional memories, such as a favorite birthday party or a first kiss. The associations may be negative as well—most readers will recall where they were when they found out about the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001. Whereas discrepant events in the classroom are unlikely to be connected to such intense emotions as these, it is important to recognize that they tap into the same neural pathways. Integrating music, art, and dramatic play can provide a means for accessing students’ emotional memory and increase their ability to retrieve the information at a later time. These types of events are often called grabbers because they command student attention and capture the imagination.

First-grade teacher Amal Haji uses the Then and Now series of books to provide her students with visual discrepant events. These books contain images from the past and compare them with contemporary pictures. The text supports the images and is a little more complex than Ms. Haji’s first graders can read independently. For example, during a study of transportation as part of her social studies instruction, Ms. Haji uses Transportation Then and Now (Nelson, 2003) and focuses the first reading of the text

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It is important to note that Ms. Matheson’s teaching pairs writing with demonstrations to give students an opportunity to clarify their understanding and support their inquiry of the unknown by creating relevant points of entry to the content. She is also careful to ground her work in the theoretical underpinnings of each demonstration.

Indeed, without this careful attention to the scientific concepts, students are likely to form misconceptions about what they have seen. The powerful responses to launching learning like this one are always part of the instructional repertoire of this teacher.

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on the visual images from the past. She displays the pages on her document camera.

She then asks her students to think about how each of the modes of transportation changed and discuss their ideas with partners.

One of the pages says, “Long ago, wagons moved people across the country” (Nelson, 2003, p. 4). As her students talk with each other, they note that people now travel in cars.

Ms. Haji does not hear other options, so she says to students, “Wagons were used for really long trips, not just to go to the store or movies. Think about traveling to see your family that lives far, far away. Or to go on vacation. How has longer travel changed?”

The students immediately start talking about airplanes and excitedly tell stories about what they know about air travel. Ms. Haji shows them the now page, which focuses on trucks as a major form of transportation, and reads the page to them: “Now, trucks move people and things from city to city” (Nelson, 2003, p. 5). She then invites students to talk about trucks as a form of transportation. These visuals invite students into their unit of study about transportation.

Visual Displays The rise of information technology has fundamentally changed the way we generate and share information. New technologies—laptops, web-based resources, tablets, and digital cameras, to name a few—are becoming an increasingly common means for classrooms to access information. Unlike earlier classroom technologies such as televisions and video recorders, these newer advances are interactive and require the active participation of the learner. We no longer view visual information as a passive experience for the learner to absorb. Rather, it is seen as a generative process in which the learner influences and changes the information. This is at the heart of visual literacy—it is the ability of one to interpret, analyze, and create visual displays of information that are accurate and complete. Students need exposure to, and experiences with, visual displays of information in order to develop these abilities.

Interactive whiteboards are a part of many classrooms, as they allow teachers to display and manipulate visual information in innovative ways. Of course, what makes the board “smart” is the user. It is important to remember that interactive whiteboards are an instructional tool. When using presentation tools such as interactive whiteboards and document cameras, keep the function in mind. These functions, whether print based or digital, include interpreting, analyzing, locating, producing, and sharing information (Frey, Fisher, & Gonzalez, 2010).

WebQuests are one way to gain attention and support long-term learning. A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity that guides student investigation of a top-

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Randy says, “When we gotta go someplace, we go in my mom’s car.”

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In addition to electronic sources, many print-based visual displays are readily available for classroom use. For example, many textbooks feature four-color images of places, people, and objects. Project some of these powerful images, and invite students to discuss their impressions. Photographs from picture books and photo-essays can help students understand information from the unit of instruction. For example, Through the Lens: National Geographic Greatest Photographs (Val, 2003) presents over one hundred years of striking images from National Geographic.

Thought-Provoking Questions Thought-provoking questions assist students in organizing new information. Like discrepant events, they appeal to the emotional channels of learning, especially in moving information to long-term memory. The use of a provocative question, particularly one that defies a simple answer, promotes interest and sustains learning by inviting students to formulate an understanding of the material. These questions may be of a general investigatory nature, as in the K-W-L technique (Ogle, 1986). K-W-L stands for “What do I know?” “What do I want to know?” “What have I learned?”

This organizer mirrors the process of scientific inquiry inherent in any investigation.

Typically, a teacher will arrange these questions into three columns and then prompt discussion about the new topic of study. Students record their responses, and then the K-W-L becomes their guide for subsequent study. Adding a fourth column for further questions at the end of the unit of study emphasizes the recursive nature of inquiry.

Other thought-provoking questions might be more specific to the unit and are likely to encourage an interdisciplinary study. When a teacher asks, “Can you truly be free if you’re not treated equally?” students are invited to examine the U.S. civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Questions like these can set the foundation for the patterns and trends we want students to see (Waters Foundation, 2010).

Teachers can establish relevance and enhance learning by organizing curriculum units around thought-provoking questions. In fact, students are likely to forget information that is not attached to any larger meaning (Donovan & Bransford, 2005).

Remember, relevance is in the mind of the learner, not just the teacher. We know from our own teaching experience that we believe everything we teach is relevant;

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ic. The teacher plans the WebQuest in advance, and students are typically given a series of questions to guide their search. The teacher may identify and bookmark specific websites to provide a frame for the learners to follow and load them onto the school’s learning management system for students to access from anywhere. Students work in groups to explore topics as varied as polar ice caps, eating disorders, and paper airplane design. While a WebQuest as a whole is much more involved than the launch of learning, its introductory component draws on the same practices of inviting students into the learning through inquiry.

Launching Learning

What Expert Thinking Do My Students Need to Witness?

We’re big fans of the TED Talks video series (www.ted.com/talks/browse). Originally begun as a platform for discussing the intersection of technology, education, and design, TED has grown to encompass a wide array of topics, including health and nutrition and geopolitical issues. TED is perhaps best known for the format of its talks—no more than eighteen minutes in length (many are shorter), combining strong images and powerful messages to create memorable learning experiences. Most of all, we as viewers get to witness the thinking of experts in their fields conveying information we don’t yet possess. Isn’t that what we try to achieve in our classrooms every day?

We are not suggesting that we abandon everything else we know about learning and devote ourselves to being TED-like speakers. After all, there would be no need for this book if that’s all it took. But a vital aspect of our practice involves conveying expert thinking to our students so they can begin to apply it. Note that we say begin.

It takes lots of interaction, with peers and the teacher, to build learning. This starts with delivering information and modeling the cognitive and metacognitive thinking an expert (the teacher) uses to understand and manipulate concepts.

Direct Explanations Teaching requires periods of time when we present information to students in a formal way. In these cases, teachers directly explain a concept or procedure. However, effective teachers know that these periods cannot lapse into didactic lectures that take too long and are not punctuated with interactions, including time when students talk with one another or when individuals write a one-minute summary of the material they have been learning about during the previous ten minutes. The presentation of information should include direct explanations—that is, “explicit statements used by the teacher to assist students in understanding a concept or strategy” (Ankrum, Genest, & Belcastro, 2014, p. 43). The intent of these direct explanations is to boost higher-order thinking skills that allow students to consider the information in regard to its applicability. For example, a kindergarten teacher points to the quotation marks

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otherwise, we wouldn’t bother to talk about it. However, we can also appreciate the importance of relevance from our students’ viewpoint. Therefore, it is up to us as instructors to make the relevance explicit. When a teacher organizes a curriculum unit around an essential question and then connects the question to the assessments and culminating projects of the unit, students can begin to make meaning of the information. After all, when students understand that they will use the information they are reading and writing to answer the question, they can then appreciate the value of their inquiry.

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Modeling and Think-Alouds One way to provide students with access to expert thinking involves the use of modeling and think-alouds. Modeling provides explicit instruction about incremental elements of a skill or concept. Modeling, however, is not telling, because an essential component of modeling is the teacher think-aloud. Through “I” statements, think-alouds draw learners’ attention to the otherwise unseen cognition that is occurring inside the teacher’s mind. Students are able to witness all the internal decision making that occurs as one grapples with information, considers and discards possibilities, and arrives at conclusions. The think-aloud helps students zoom in on details they might otherwise overlook, something to be expected when learners are still novices to the topic.

Teachers often use think-alouds in relation to a text they are reading or viewing.

U.S. history teacher Leanne Downing uses a think-aloud as she projects an interactive graph of population shifts in California since 1900: “When I look at this graph, the first thing I notice is the large number of people who came from Midwest states.

It looks like that’s the dominant area people have migrated from within the United States. Wait, now I’m noticing that Illinois and Missouri are separated out from the measures of Midwest states, even though they are also in the same region. So they must have called out those specific states because they were significant sources. I’m curious about that, so I’m going to scroll over this area of the graph [moves cursor].

I’m getting a pop-up window that says that between 1930 and 1940, 4 percent of the residents of California were born in Illinois, and another 4 percent were born in Missouri. So now that’s capturing my attention. Why is that important? Here’s what I’m noticing now but I missed earlier. My attention is being drawn to the decade between 1930 and 1940. There’s a spike in the population in California that is comprised of people from those two states, as well as Oklahoma and Texas. So now that’s triggering my background knowledge. I know that’s the era of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, which affected that region a lot.”

In thinking aloud about the graphic, Ms. Downing reinforces the cognitive processes she used to make meaning of the information displayed. Perhaps most important, she demonstrates the persistence necessary to comprehend complex quantitative data,

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in a book and says, “These are quotation marks. Writers use them to let you know when a character is talking. When you see quotation marks, think to yourself, ‘This means someone is talking.’” She is providing a direct explanation of how the content information (the quotation mark) is applied (why writers use them and what a reader does with the information). Direct explanations draw attention to what a learner has just done. For example, when a mathematics teacher confirms a student’s correct response and then says, “You were able to solve that because you used the distributive property we’re studying,” she is furnishing a direct explanation.

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especially in showing her willingness to ask herself questions, explore features, and actively apply background information to contextualize the data.

Worked Examples

Karin Lange, Julie Booth, and Kristie Newton (2014) suggest that as the teacher examines each step of the worked example, he or she asks aloud: • “What did this person do?”

• “Why is it valid?”

• “Why is it helpful?”

As students begin to grasp the processes in the example, teachers can provide worked nonexamples—that is, ones that lead to an incorrect answer (teachers identify upfront that worked nonexamples are incorrect)—and ask: • “What did this person do?”

• “Why is it invalid?”

For example, eighth-grade algebra teacher Hector Oliveras poses the following worked nonexample to his students.

7 + 3x = 5 – 2x. Marco did this problem, but he did it incorrectly. He did this as his first step: 10x = 5 – 2x. I can see what he did. He added the first two whole numbers on the left side of the equation. That’s how he got 10x. That wasn’t valid because he didn’t combine like terms.

Instead, he should have combined the like terms of 3x – 2x. That would have given him 1x.

As students become accustomed to the practice of posing questions to develop self-explanations, they become increasingly adept at locating the mathematical reasoning to use. Students can use a combination of worked examples and problems to solve to further develop their skills and practice applying principles. In addition,

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Worked examples are problems that have already been completed and are used by the teacher to discuss the reasoning used to solve them. Mathematics and science classes, especially chemistry and physics, where mathematical skills are needed, use them often. This approach is particularly useful when introducing a new concept or skill. In conventional classrooms, the teacher demonstrates how to solve a set of problems and then furnishes similar problems for students to solve on their own or with partners. With worked examples, the teacher provides a completed problem, with each step displayed, and poses a series of questions about each step. Initially, the teacher poses and then answers these questions. In time, students ask similar questions of themselves while studying worked examples, giving them opportunities to develop their own self-explanations.

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students adopt a different perspective as they examine the problem, which in turn can lead to new understanding (Waters Foundation, 2010).

Systems Thinking and Launching Learning

• What mental models do I use?

• What patterns and changes over time am I noticing?

• What assumptions of my own do I need to challenge?

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Teachers who engage in systems thinking about their classroom are consciously engaging in reflection to scrutinize their own practices. While it may seem as though every educator interrogates his or her own assumptions, we can assure you this is not the case. We’re reminded of a veteran teacher we worked with many years ago who seemed to start every discussion with “I’ve been teaching second grade for twentyseven years, and I believe . . .” The problem wasn’t that she had many years of experience but rather that she failed to evolve in her teaching. Going into her classroom was like stepping into a time machine. It was as if the students in her classroom had been transported back more than two decades. It didn’t matter what this teacher’s grade-level colleagues were doing or the agreements they had reached during collaborative team meetings. She continued to use the outdated curriculum that she had hidden away. Her students sat at individual desks in rows, and they completed lots of worksheets in silence. She hadn’t taught second grade for twenty-seven years; she taught second grade exactly the same way twenty-seven times. We’ve both taught long enough to know that the next new thing doesn’t always mean it’s the best thing.

Some methods have been sustained over the years because they work. But what was so frustrating was that this teacher was resistant to examining her own practices.

Despite opportunities to engage with colleagues in reflective decision making, she refused. Systems thinking teachers, on the other hand, seek to continuously improve and strengthen their practices. They ask themselves these questions.

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The Takeaways For this chapter, the takeaways are as follows.

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• Students need to witness some expert thinking through direct explanations, modeling and think• The learning target has to be made alouds, and worked examples.

• Systems thinking teachers relevant for students. routinely interrogate their own • Teachers should be able to assumptions and mental models anticipate the errors and misconceptions that students have. in order to continuously improve practice.

• There are a number of ways to invite students into learning, including demonstrations, discrepant events, visual displays, and thought-provoking questions.

• There should be a clear learning target, intention, or objective for every lesson.

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VISIT GO.SOLUTION-TREE.COM/INSTRUCTION TO DOWNLOAD THE REPRODUCIBLES IN THIS BOOK.

• Gather helpful sample surveys, unit plans, analysis forms, rubrics, templates, and pull-out questions to develop systems-thinking learning environments

F R E Y

THE AGE OF STANDARDS

• Prompt discussion and reflection using the driving questions and chapter takeaways

•

CORE: MEANINGFUL TEACHING IN

• Examine the seven elements of the Unstoppable Learning model necessary for systems thinking

F I S H E R

AUTHOR OF CURRICULUM AT YOUR

• Learn how to become effective systems thinkers that ensure learning schoolwide

LEARNING

—LAUREN POROSOFF MIDDLE SCHOOL TEACHER AND

K–12 teachers and administrators will:

UNSTOPPABLE

“In clear and accessible language, Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey explain that efforts to improve teaching only work when we see our classrooms as systems: every person and process impacts all the others, and seemingly small changes can have large effects on learning. This book is full of practical suggestions and tools that empower teachers to design the whole system— including peer and studentteacher relationships, learning and assessment tasks, and classroom routines—to lead to better learning.”

Every day, teachers and administrators tirelessly work to fulfill their most significant duty: to ensure students learn. In Unstoppable Learning, authors Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey uncover systems thinking as the key to improving teaching and learning schoolwide.

Systems thinking—which involves distinguishing patterns and relationships and thinking through short- and long-term consequences— is critical to creating clear learning targets, preparing and delivering effective lessons, and successfully assessing instruction. To be systems thinkers, educators must understand the big picture of education and the intricate relationships that affect teaching and learning. The Unstoppable Learning model contains seven essential elements of teaching and learning to create a network of interactions that helps teachers and students reach new understandings.

Seven Essential Elements to Unleash Student Potential