Tag Archives: initial instruction

Tighten The Lug Nuts of Learning

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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.

Highly Effective Teachers are Masters at Adjusting Instruction

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October.  Four weeks into the school year and it’s time to adjust.  Unless a teacher is gifted with the “all seeing eye”, true omniscience, the reality of September’s class time changed any informed assumptions a teacher made before the first day of school about a child’s readiness to learn and anticipated success in learning.  Summer regression, summer experiences, the effects of time on a child’s interests and preferences, and how a child reacts to September’s instruction and new teachers alter the best of assumptions and plans.  Adjustments are a necessary stage in successful teaching that is committed to causing every child to learn.

Decades ago, a principal would ask to see a teacher’s instructional units and lesson plans at the beginning of the school year.  A teacher prepared units and lessons for the entire 36 weeks of a school year.  This meant the teacher was locked and loaded with a plan for teaching.  It is also true that decades ago teachers did not use universal screening and most school assessments were summative.  We taught the “book”.  There was a test at the end of each chapter or unit that preceded the beginning of the next chapter or unit.  Teach and test, teach and test.  The school report card was a single indicator, usually the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills and a child’s ITBS scores marked her school standing for the year.  Instruction was a straight line continuum from September until June.  Decades ago.

Today, adjustments in instruction are the name of the teaching game.  Adjustments to instruction begin in student teaching when teachers-in-training must demonstrate their proficiency using adjusted instruction to qualify for an initial teaching license.  As a consultant working with the DPI on educator preparation programs, I have firsthand experience in creating standards-based pre-student teaching and student teaching requirements.  Student teachers must demonstrate their ability to “plan, teach, assess, adjust teaching, and assess again” to pass their clinical semester.  The emphasis is on each child learning from the lesson and units not the coverage of texts or a calendar of class time.

Teaching student teachers to make in-unit adjustments is easy.  They do not know a different process.  Working with veteran teachers to stop the progression of a unit because some children were not successful learners and to adjust teaching to cause them to be successful is a more difficult professional challenge.  Adjustment is not reteaching but teaching differently.  “Why now?” and ““why me?” are common responses.  “Because you are responsible for the success of every child” is the singular answer.

The best “… teach, assess, adjust…” process is collaborative.  Explaining one’s work and thinking and planning to another educator provides a teacher with a reality check.  “Does it make sense?”  It is easy for a teacher in a closed classroom to recline into the flow of school weeks and the check off of the units and chapters and activities taught.  This is especially true if principal visits to the classroom are infrequent and aligned only with annual evaluations or effective educator documentation.  Better practice is for the principal to make many informal “look ins” and “check ins” across a semester.  Looking in is a physical, first person, in the classroom visualization of teaching and learning.  “Checking” is a conversation about the teaching that is more than a “how is it going?”.  Checking in asks the teacher to provide stories, in-class data, and to explain how reflection informs her ability to bring all children to success.

Collaboration may be easier between teachers than a teacher and principal because evaluative accountability is not present.  Lesson studies create a “let’s focus a group conversation on a lesson I just taught.  Here are the assessments from that lesson.  What is the best next thing to do?”.

Adjusting is not a negative.  Some may perceive the need for a teacher to adjust and teach again as a failure of initial teaching.  Far from it.  Even when a lesson is aimed properly at children’s readiness to learn and all children have the prerequisite information and skills for the new lesson, the nature of challenging material and rigorous expectations will mean that 20-30% of the children will not achieve solid and secured learning with initial instruction alone.  Challenging and rigorous learning goals mean that some children need adjusted and extra teaching to achieve success.  If the lesson target is too easy to achieve, it was not properly targeted and not worth the time to teach.  Good planning expects adjustments to teaching.

It is October, a time for serious consideration of effectiveness of your first units to instruction considering the data from multiple assessments now at hand.  Consider your assumptions about your class and about each student.  Consider your assumptions about the rigor of your lessons and how you challenged all children.  Consider the effectiveness of your tier 2 in-class grouping of children who needed adjusted instruction to be successful learners in September.  Consider the adjustments you need to make in the units and lessons to be taught during the next eight months to cause every child to learn.

This will not be the only time for instructional adjustments.  Adjustments should occur continuously throughout the school year.  October, though, is a wonderful second month of school for principals to do their diligence and assure that the entire faculty is in adjustment mode.  October adjustments set the tone for best instructional practices throughout the school year. 

So that the rest of the staff does not feel left out, October also is prime time to review school lunch menus, assignments of aides for instructional support, routines on the school bus as the weather turns cold, the maintenance of outdoor fields for winter, protocols for safety and security, and every other thing that seems routine in the school.  Check it out now and make necessary adjustments.