Differentiation in Stage 6 Assessment

UNSW, where Ignite the Spark 2018 took place

About a week ago I attended the Ignite the Spark 2018 Conference. This Professional Learning was mainly focused on assessment in relation to giftedness but what was most interesting across the conference was that, underneath a rhetoric built around excitement for assessment and the need for teacher quality, the real subtext of most of the sessions seemed to be that the HSC Exams have become obsolete and that the requirements handed down from NESA and the DoE aren't represented by this increasingly irrelevant process.

But, like it or not, the HSC exams remain largely unchanged and this means that Stage 6 has become an increasingly challenging transition phase between all the requirements of 21st century learning covered by Years K-10 and the need to perform well in a 19th century-styled examination at the end of Year 12. 

Enter Lisa O'Neill, the Head Teacher of HSIE at St Mary's Senior High, who presented a brilliant seminar at Ignite the Spark that centred on how we can better meet the challenges set forth by the demands of the HSC in 2018 and beyond by differentiating our assessment of Year 11 and 12. In her presentation Lisa identified our tendency as teachers to focus on preparing students for exams, and the way that our assessment tasks lead towards the HSC exams, and questioned the capacity of these assessments in actually helping these students to learn. We can't eradicate the exam but there is a concerted need to shift our thinking so that students become more skill-focused. NESA seems to be acknowledging this through the mandating of only 1 formalised examination per subject, per year. There is an undeniable tension, though, between the push for assessment in Stage 6 to become less focused on preparing for the HSC exams and the HSC exam-focused culture that already exists in NSW schools.

Here are some things we need to consider:

• NESA syllabuses include a requirement that each KLA assesses their students using assessment as, of, and for learning. I've tended to interpret this as meaning that not all assessment tasks should be based on establishing data that assesses student ability (assessment of learning).
• About 60% of domestic university student enrollments from 2014-2017 were non-ATAR, which suggests that universities are becoming less concerned with the HSC examination when it comes to evaluating who they admit into their courses.

Getting back to Lisa O'Neill's Differentiation in Stage 6 Assessment presentation, she takes her lead from John Hattie in approaching differentiation as something that "relates more to addressing students' different phases of learning from novice to capable to proficient rather than merely providing different activities to different (groups of) students" (from Hattie's Visible Learning for Teaching). O'Neill also piqued my interest by using this to interpret the as, of and for dichotomy of assessment in a more holistic sense - that each individual assessment task should encapsulate all three of these forms of assessment. 

I think I'm down with that. 

Linking her work to the Professional Standards, O'Neill highlighted Standard 1, IE. 'Know Your Students', and clarified her interpretation of differentiation as having one broad task that allows access points for all students. In a nutshell, assessment:

• Should provide students with multiple ways to achieve.
• Can provide access points for students moving through a spectrum of novice to capable to proficient.

O'Neill presents on the Assessment Cycle of Love

 Here are some other recommendations made by O'Neill:

1. Use what she refers to as the 'Assessment Cycle of Love', a diagrammatic tool for designing assessment, to identify gaps in your tasks. Are the outcomes, marking criteria, feedback, and process of assessment all as per NESA advice? Are assessment as, of and for learning all functional within the task?
2. Staff evaluation should be an integral part of the process, with consideration of whether a task has allowed students to set learning goals, and what skills students were taught while undertaking the task.  
3. Know the data - use SMART, SCOUT, our own assessment tasks, and the Educator Calculator (a data tool for assessment that can be found at the DoE Centre for Education on Statistics and Evaluation).
4. Consider the need for access points in tasks so students don't become disheartened when an assessment task has shown them that they can't do anything in preparation for the HSC exams. They might be able to access a band in the marking criteria, but can they access a skill set?
5. Include feedback in the marking criteria. Feedback is pivotal for Stage 6 assessment and all criteria should be a form of assessment for learning (IE. What can teachers and students alike gain from reading this criteria in preparing for future learning?)
6. Can we shift the student mindset away from marks and towards skills? Have students make an appointment for feedback conferencing and use this time for students to annotate their own response. Identity their areas of weaknesses ahead of time and get them to look for these weaknesses in the task so that they can establish learning goals.

Some Useful Links

"Crunching the Numbers" - A report from the Mitchell Institute on the use and usefulness of the ATAR.
Student Conferencing and Feedback  - providing students with 1:1 feedback to facilitate personal growth.
Assessment For Learning - an alternative approach in using separate diagnostic assessment with students.

Ten Things We Should Say Everyday (and Why They're Important)

Sydney Church of England Grammar is also known as the 'Shore School'

Earlier this year I attended the Project Zero conference at the Sydney Church of England Grammar School. It was ace, and I've already written about some of the other professional learning I did there on feedback processes and pushing for depth in student thinking. The conference itself was a great opportunity and saw over 500 people in attendance from the full gamut of Australian schools - state schools, independent schools, religious schools, and other educational sectors - and I recommend checking it out the next time it comes around.

One of the keynote lectures drew on the concept of a culture of thinking, with Dr Ron Ritchhart speaking quite passionately about the joy of 'learning together' and defining a culture as a shared language that represents a collective way of thinking. In the case of a learning culture, Dr Ritchhart identified several cultural forces that can shape this shared language:

• Routines
• Opportunity
• Modelling
• Time
• Interactions
• Environment
• Language
• Expectations

In the specific case of modelling, Dr Ritchhart elaborated further by describing this as demonstrating good practice and thinking aloud. More particularly, modelling of exemplar responses allows students to explicitly see how teacher cognition works, and - in the words of the great educator Vygotsky - lets "Children grow into the intellectual life around them". 

And that brings us to the title of this post, the ten things that Dr Ritchhart says we should say to students everyday. I've jotted them down here with his explanations of why they're important.

Dr Ron Ritchhart's presentation ^

1. Hello and Goodbye - all students need to feel known and acknowledged. Disruptive behaviour decreases, learning and engagement increases. Try not to be busy during this transition time while students are entering and leaving the class. 
2. WMYST?: What Makes You Say That? - make this an integral part of the classroom. Ask students this question so that they are forced to become more independent in terms of responding to class activities, providing their own thoughts rather than relying on the teacher's.
3. Talk to me about what you're doing - with this prompt, students are also being asked to make their metacognitive process more visible. Leave it open-ended, let the student find their own way to articulate what they're doing.
4. Here's where we're going with this - purpose is important. When people have a sense of purpose their learning increases dramatically. There is no research supporting 'learning intentions', the research tends to centre around 'purpose' instead, and this is because they aren't the same thing - stating a learning intention may not be as effective or the same thing as the broader purpose of something.
5. Here's the thinking you'll need to do... - when teachers explain an assignment or project to students we tend to get into the logistics by default. Then students fulfill these logistics and are surprised when they do get an A, and some aren't even sure how it happened or how it can be replicated. As teachers we need to keep in mind that i's the thinking that needs to be striven for, not the result.  
6. Let's debrief - new learning is incredibly fragile, so it's important to go over it to help reinforce/consolidate what students have just learned. Students in a high school setting are most often about to move on to another class or activity with completely different demands (for example, once the student finishes English they may be about to move on to their Mathematics or Geography class). One way that Dr Ritchhart highlighted was the 'IQ routine' in which students are invited to give insights and ask further questions at the end of each lesson.
7. I've noticed... - contrast this with 'I liked', which flips attention back onto the teacher. The language of 'I've noticed' is that it's less about turning students into people-pleasers and more about them considering what they've just done as learners. 
8. We - this creates a sense of community with the students.
9. I'm sorry - teachers need to be willing to admit mistakes, rather than seeing apology as a sign of weakness. 
10. Wow! - give students an opportunity to surprise us. Delight in their learning. If there are no 'wow' moments then you're playing too safe. 

More on this can be found on Dr Ron Ritchhart's website here.

Pushing for Depth in Our Students' Thinking - David Camp

The Shore School (also known as the Sydney Church of England Grammar School). What a view!

It's a drizzly, slightly-steamy Saturday morning in Milson's Point, and I'm mingling with the learning cultures set at the Shore School for the 2017 'Cultures of Thinking' Conference. This convergence of teachers from all sectors of education comes at the behest of Project Zero, the Harvard School of Education's 50 year-old investigation into the Arts as a cognitive science.

It's free professional learning, which in my mind is one of the best kinds, and it's the best way to end a teaching week. Imagine contrasting the chaotic daily challenges that come with teaching in a comprehensive high school setting with a day of positive pedagogy. The sharing of growth-promoting teaching practice not only meets our Professional Standards for Standard 6 (Engage in Professional Learning); it also feels good and enables me to continue developing my approach to the classroom. 

There was mention made today of 'learning teachers'. If I'm anything in my job, I believe that I'm a 'learning teacher'. I won't ever stop learning and it's explicit exploration of this concept that continues to give my job meaning and, if I'm honest, adds value to my life.

David Camp is Head of English at the Emmanuel School, a Jewish school in Randwick, and he presented a fantastic session on rendering thinking more visible in line with Project Zero's aims for building a more pragmatic and embedded 21st century learning culture.

I've written before about Project Zero's See Think Wonder activity but it's always useful to revisit this practical tool for visible thinking with different examples, and Mr Camp showed us a great example in his session, which I'll outline below.

But firstly, to recap, the See Think Wonder paradigm asks for the responder to look at a text and ask the following questions, in this order:

1. What do you see
2. What does that make you think about?
3. What does it make you wonder?

Watch the Pink Floyd film clip above (a classic) and then See Think Wonder it. Can I use 'See Think Wonder' as a verb? Why, yes I can, it's a neologism.

So, firstly, we SEE. Identify what you can see but don't attach anything of significance to your notes for this part.

Secondly, THINK. What associations or connotations come from what you see? What is being suggested?

And the third part, we WONDER. What do you want to know more about? What does it make you wonder? What are the bigger questions that arise from this text?

Here's my modelled example, completed in context during the session administered by Mr Camp (IE. The conditions we would ask students to do it in, only perhaps I was given less time to do it in - which is fine as Mr Camp covered a lot!)

See

People walking, classrooms, stuffy, high angle vs. low angle shots, muted colour scheme, modern/1970s music, montage of images, corporal punishment, drudgery, panning shot of bricks and grey, marching students, cellblocks, large clock, close-up on feet walking in unison, identical uniforms, teacher with idiosyncratic accent, angry, wide shot of hundreds of students, shadow of hammer falling with machinery, students turning into sausages, students smashing school, breaking bricks and windows, piling up of wood, burning building down, camera panning down to flames, flames are the first glimpse of real colour in the whole clip.

Think

Historical associations - teacher's accent reminiscent of German / hard to understand - allusions to Nazism and Hitler? Dystopia. Symbolism of students being ground into sausages representative of exploitation and waste. Piling up of wood - French Revolution. Panning shots show how big and insidious the control is. Wall being broken down - connection to Berlin Wall coming down (a prediction?) Revolution. High angle and low angle shots establish relationship of power.

Wonder

When was this text made, specifically? What was going in the world at that time? What happens to the sausages? Do the adults eat them? Who directed it? Is it a criticism of private schools? Or all schools in general? Or education in general? Or society in general? Which message is the most important - the value of the individual? The rigid structured nature of education? Has the system ever worked?

As you can see, the See Think Wonder activity is a great way to deepen student cognition. Mr Camp says that it takes thinking from the 'literal to the figurative, the shallow to the deep', and he also speaks about applying the framework to non-visual texts, explaining it as thus:

1. What do you see? (identify the key words)
2. What does it make you think about? (Which of the elements you have studied - themes, techniques, moments, quotes - comes to mind for these ideas?)
3. What do you wonder? (What are the deeper ramifications raised in the question?)

This was just a small part of David Camp's overall seminar.

Something else I'd like to share that he covered was exploring what the future classroom might look like. 

The Jetsons view of the future classroom gets points for including robot teachers, however, the apparent presence of a blackboard seems unnecessarily hip and retro.

We were asked to imagine what our class would look like if money and time weren't issues. In other words, what would we do with our room to create the sort of student we want to see. This activity was guided through the use of six key questions, and it might be fun, intrepid reader, if you wanted to try this too - it's a useful activity for rendering our abstract philosophy as something more explicit.

• What does this classroom look like?
• What does it sound like?
• What type of questions are being asked? and by whom?
• Who is interacting with whom and how?
• What types of activities are taking place?
• What is the headline for your classroom? That is, if a newspaper came along five years after you created this perfect classroom, what headline would they run?

My thoughts in relation to each of the above questions:

• I'd love to have windows that could be closed with shutters to keep light out, screens on each wall for projection from my computer, air conditioning, whiteboards on every wall, single tables to facilitate better maneuverability in the classroom - or, better yet, some way of programming a table-organisation plan into an app that then moves the tables around in my room for me on a period by period basis. How cool would that be? Also, I'd love a way of electronically opening my classroom door with a button on a key (like my car). 
• Soundwise, I'd hope my classroom would sound loud during discussion, and quieter than that when I'm trying to speak to everyone. To be honest, I haven't really thought about sound in the classroom that much. I'd love to have high quality speakers that played loud enough without distracting neighbouring classrooms. Sound-proofing between rooms, maybe?
• In terms of the third and fourth points, I would want students to question everything, from in-context and comprehension questions relating to the content of texts being studied, to metaquestions about curriculum and teaching practise. I would like students to feel comfortable giving honest and useful feedback to me, and to ask why we learn what we learn, and how it relates to what they might want to do with their lives.
• The kinds of activities would be predominantly student-designed with teacher guidance (where necessary). Students would match what they learn with their vocational goals and interests, they would research projects of their choice in order to apply their learning authentically to the outside world, and would interact with teachers in a meaningful way to meet their personal learning goals.
• And my headline? Students Take Control of Classroom: Coming to grips with co-design between teacher and student.

See, Think, Wonder

A lone gum tree in Bega, photo from abc.net.au

Today I had the pleasure of attending an Into English professional learning session on the HSC Advanced English Module A comparative study of 1984 and Metropolis in Burwood, Sydney. Aside from being a nice day of collegial discussion and delivery of English guru-dom from Emily Bosco and Anthony Bosco, I found it especially useful as a jumping off point for an idea that I could use beyond the comparative study. 

This quick, simple and flexible activity that seems like it could endure a multitude of contexts is the See Think Wonder routine, developed by Harvard Project Zero as part of their Visible Thinking framework, and regularly touted by Into English as a reliable way to get students to externalise their process for text analysis.

The model is brilliantly straightforward:

• What do you see?
• What do you think about that?
• What does it make you wonder?

This can be applied in so many different ways, and for multiple KLAs at multiple stages of student development.  

By the time Emily Bosco had demonstrated an example for analysing Metropolis I had already started applying it to things I was currently teaching.

I'm currently doing Belonging as the Area of Study with my Year 11 Advanced class, with Skryznecki's Immigrant Chronicle as the Prescribed Text. In a week or so from now the class will be longing at an example of a Related Text, so I'll give them some guided questions in the See, Think, Wonder fashion.

SEE: What characteristics of belonging do you see in this text?

THINK: What perspective of belonging do you think is being communicated in this text?

What elements of context do you think may have influenced the composer of this text?

WONDER: In what way might this text relate to Skryznecki's treatment of belonging in his poetry?

The activity is effective because it pushes students towards incorporating observations into the thinking process and owning the answers to the questions. It shouldn't come as a surprise to most teachers reading this, but half the battle in helping students find success is getting them to take risks when it comes to learning. The See, Think, Wonder routine acts as a scaffold to encourage ownership of the analytical process.

Here's another example I'm toying with for use with Year 9 in their current study of indigenous poetry. It relates to the Oodgeroo Noonuccal poem Municipal Gum. 

SEE: What characteristics of Australian society do you see in this text?

THINK: What perspective of Australian society do you think is being communicated in this poem?

What do you think the context of the poet and poem might be?

WONDER: How might this poem relate to other poems we have looked at this term?

I hope to try it this week, so we'll see how it goes!

You can check out Into English here. They provide great professional learning on a range of HSC English modules, and I recommend them unequivocally.

For more on Harvard Project Zero's Visible Learning (particularly in regards to See Think Wonder), follow this link. This is also a great resource.