Tag Archives: Checking for understanding

Tighten The Lug Nuts of Learning

Posted on by
Reply

I watched a technician in the auto shop balancing and installing new tires on my car.  He used a pneumatic wrench to tighten the lug nuts that secure each wheel to its axel hub.  The sound of the wrench ratcheting said the nut was tight.  When all four wheels were attached, he walked around the car and manually checked each with a torque wrench.

Catching my watchfulness out of the corner of his eye, he said “Just making sure the work is done right.  Don’t want your wheels flying off while you are driving”.

What We Should Know

With my car safely back in the school parking lot, I recently watched fifth grade children struggle with dividing fractions.  The concept of a reciprocal, inverting the divisor, and multiplying the dividend by the inverted divisor is a head scratcher to many children.  Dividing fractions is not a single lesson, but an operation that is taught, clarified, and strengthened in many lessons.  Some children demonstrated they understood but others had no confidence in their work.  They did what they were told to do without understanding why they did it.

Over the next weeks, I observed this fifth grade teacher checking the lug nuts of dividing fractions.  She knew that only a few children successfully learned this operation through their initial instruction.  Consequently, she literally walked new and clarifying lessons on dividing fractions around the classroom until every child knew what to do when presented a fraction to divide and also could explain how the reciprocal of the divisor allows us to use multiplication to split the dividend into equal parts.  She made each child’s future division of fractions roadworthy for use in learning advanced math.

Does this make teaching and learning just a matter of mechanics?  Not at all.  It demonstrates the diligence required to ensure that all children achieve learning success.  Knowledge and skills that are essential for future and scaffolded learning require teachers to check and recheck that these have been securely learned by every student.  Without the process of checking and tightening, the wheels of their future education will come loose and their learning will crash.

Why Is This Thus?

Although I use mathematics as my example, this blog applies to every unit of instruction taught in school. 

The legendary math “wall” is real and almost all students hit their math “wall”, usually within the content of trigonometry or calculus.  The “wall” arrives when the abstraction of mathematics is greater than the student can conceive.  The “wall” is not a big deal because most of us do not use advanced math in our daily living or careers.  However, not having the math skills below the wall is huge.  All children need to be skillful in math reasoning using numbers and operations, measurement, data analysis, geometry, and solving problems with unknowns.  These are career and life math skills.

https://nces.ed.gov/pubs97/97885.pdf

Successful learning in math up to the “wall” is achieved through scaffolded, grade level or course instruction, and active engagement between a teacher and student.  The scaffold looks like continuous instruction in 4K through grade 6 mathematics, pre-Algebra, Algebra 1, and Geometry.  The scaffold is an annually spiraled teaching of operations, reasoning, and problem solving.  Each successive instruction tightens student comprehension and application of math learning.

Active engagement is when a student interprets the math problem, explains her plan to solve the problem, uses math thinking and reasoning to resolve the problem, and presents a solution.  Engagement is all of these, not just one of the three.  The process takes in-class time because it requires ongoing student and teacher conversations.  The student must put math into words and words into mathematical thinking and use mathematical thinking to find clear and clean solutions.  The teacher listens, critiques, guides, and confirms.  The conversation is a must because it clarifies and secures the student’s learning.  The conversation is the teacher’s torque wrench.

We tighten the math lug nuts in 4K through algebra/geometry by actively engaging each student in exercising their mathematical reasoning continuously through the math curriculum.

What Should We Know About This Thusness?

It is easy and fun for teachers and students to start new lessons.   Motivation to do the work assigned is high when the information and skills are being introduced.  There are multiple “I get it” moments.  As the applications of the new information and skills become more complex, the number of “I get it” moments are harder to achieve.  Ultimately, more students say “I don’t get it” and this is when the engagement between teacher and student is critical. 

“Tell me what you do get” starts the conversation of clarification. 

“Let’s rethink the problem” opens new possibilities for successful learning.

“Let’s assure we are applying the right operations in the order needed and that we understand why we are doing this” secures student learning.

Each of these steps is an out loud conversation that moves a student from “I don’t get it” to “I get it” and the ability to apply what is learned in the future.

It is the diligence to complete and secure student learning that is hard and this is where too much teaching and learning stumbles.  The wheels come off a student’s learning when we leave her in an “I don’t get it” moment.

To Do

Plan what the learning outcomes look like and secure the learning of each outcome for every student.  Tighten the lug nuts everyday. 

Do this through personal engagement.  Asking “Are there any questions?” after giving students initial instruction only confirms that no one wants to ask a question.  It does not confirm that any student learned what was taught.  “Does anyone have a question?” does not tighten the lugs.

“Tell me…” and “Show me…” and “Explain your thinking” and taking the time to listen, clarify, critique, and confirm are the wrenches that tighten the lug nuts of student learning.

The Big Duh!

Because there is so much to teach and so little time to teach all of it, we feel the need to move quickly through units of instruction.  “We need to be done with this unit by the end of the month” often drives us to close the unit before all children are secure in their learning.  We are consoled by the curricular spiral and thinking “if they don’t learn it this year, they will learn it next year”.  This is how the lug nuts of learning loosen.  Next year’s learning is predicated on success this year, it is not a repeat of the past.

Don’t worry about how long it takes to have every student reach secure learning of a unit.  Learning is built upon secured learning; future learning fails when the clock tells us to move on.

Tighten the lug nuts of learning in every lesson taught to ensure all students are roadworthy for their next educational adventure.

“Tell Me” and “Show Me” If You Want To Be Understood

Posted on by
Reply

I can hear Robert Shaw’s voice. “Do ya folla’?”, Quint, the shark-hunting captain of the Orca, asked Martin Brody (Roy Schneider) and Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfus) in Jaws. “Do ya folla’?” was Quint’s way of checking if the Sheriff and oceanographer thoroughly understood what he was asking them to do.  The dangers of hunting a great white shark necessitated that Brody and Hooper followed Quint’s directions to the letter. Without exaggeration, the consequences to the future when we are teaching children can be just as serious as those in Jaws. Instead of being consumed by a shark, children may be consumed by errors of misunderstanding resulting for their failure to learn from you.

What is your checking query? As a classroom teacher or principal or curriculum director or facilities manager, how do you check to verify that those you are instructing or directing or mentoring or leading have a successful understanding of what you expect them to do? A checking query is essential. Not to have one is to be a pitcher throwing nine innings of a baseball game without ever hearing the umpire call “strike” or “ball.” Just like the pitcher watching for the umpire’s call, a teacher who models solutions to a math problem needs to know what each student heard, saw and understands regarding each possible solution. Without this feedback, the teacher should stop and not say another word. No feedback – no going forward.

In educationalese, “do you follow” can easily become one of two requests. Tell me. Show me. If you ask these two questions consistently, you will know if your students, teachers, and custodians are clear in their understanding of your expectations of their future performance. Those who study pedagogy, will recognize “Tell me/Show me” as application of Madeline Hunter’s “checking for understanding,” a timeless lesson design strategy.

What does “tell me” sound like?

You are an art teacher. You have demonstrated how to mount a lump of clay on a potter’s wheel. With students gathered around, you demonstrated the “a, b, c’s” of centering an amount of fresh clay on the center of the wheel, how to use the heels of your palms and your thumbs to work and shape the clay, and how to use finger pressure to draw the clay vertically into the beginnings of a small bowl.  In a perfect world, every child now is ready to throw a bowl from a lump of clay.

Common practice is for the teacher to look at the faces of surrounding children and ask “Any questions?” And, with no children bold enough to show they did not see exactly what the teacher said or did, the teacher sends them to their wheels where more than half sit looking at the lump of clay wondering “What do I do now?”

“Tell me” is an easy question. No one has to straddle the potter’s bench to say “First, you …”. “Tell me” is verbal – just repeat back what I just said to you. The “tell” does not have to be word perfect. Just get the sequence right. Just describe how your hands should work on the clay.  Describe how the turning speed of the wheel does the work of moving the clay.  Describe in words that demonstrate that you have a mental imaging of what you are supposed to do when you sit at your wheel.

If enough students participate in oral feedback, you can generalize that they understand “well enough” what to do. The key is that a majority of the students participated in the “tell me” and those who did not gave adequate visible agreement in what was told.

If the “tell me” does not meet the teacher’s level of confidence, then re-teaching is in order. Re-teaching involves the same key words in a different story line. Re-teaching involves the correction of any parts of the “tell” that were clearly wrong. Re-teaching is aimed at causing all students to be able to contribute to the next “tell me.”

Then do the “tell me” again. And, again, if the second “tell” does not meet your confidence level. Subsequent re-teachings cannot be repeats of the first or even second. They must directly clarify the sequence of steps and correct the mistakes in the “tell”.

You are a principal discussing the school’s practices in using standards-based grading. “Tell me” should achieve the same feedback loop as the “tell me” of the art teacher. And, if you are a curriculum director leading an in-service on the use of formative assessments, your “tell me” will sound like the art teacher and principal’s “tell me.” The same is true for the facilities supervisor who is showing a new custodian how to use a floor scrubbing machine. The supervisor wants to hear an accurate verbal description of what the supervisor demonstrated.

“Tell me” is one of the simplest yet most often ignored or misused strategies for getting instructional feedback. Many leaders will use it once or twice and then believe that if their students and subordinates got it right once or twice, they will get it right each time new instruction is given in the future. Wrong! This may be true if the future instruction is a repeat of past instruction, but if it is new instruction, especially new and without transfer from other past instruction, “tell me” is essential.

You are half-way in confidently believing that students and subordinates understand your instruction or direction. Now, “show me.”

“Show me” is more strategic. A teacher or principal or director or supervisor does not have time to view a “show me” by every student and subordinate. So, pick one or two students to straddle the potters wheel and begin to throw a bowl or go to the SmartBoard to write out a solution to a math problem or construct a grading template for a given middle school writing standard or demonstrate how to set the height adjustments on a riding lawn mower and mow a field in a way that does not require subsequent raking.

“Show me’s” must be objective and subjective. The “show” of the persons selected may not be as perfect as the demonstration. Objectively, does the “show” meet minimum requirements? And, subjectively, the person evaluating the “show” must suspend everything else known about the person showing and observe only the demonstration of the “show”. Being objectively and subjectively fair often is hard in a “show me” but it is essential.

If you pick a representative student and rotate your picking so that all students and subordinates over time will be called upon to “show me”, you can use these selected shows to reinforce your confidence that your students and subordinates know what to do and also know how to do it.

“Tell me and show me” also conserve time. The minutes that it takes to ask students and subordinates to tell and show you what they have heard and observed you say and do is significantly less than the time and effort it would take to go forward with their unchecked work only to find later that their thinking and skills are all wrong. Reteaching after incorrect information has been practiced and reinforced takes a lot of time and very specific instruction to unlearn the incorrect and learn the correct. “Tell me and show me” is an efficient and effective way to assure readiness for independent practice of new learning.

So, now I ask you in my Quint voice, “Do ya follow?” Tell me.  Show me.