K-2 Teachers

December 10, 2013

Joy Donlin & Ryan Dunn
Agenda
• Welcome and introductions
• Problem solving strategies in an
elementary classroom
• Exploring a fixed versus growth mindset
• Investigating effective assessment
practices
• Looking at student work
• Designing a lesson
Outcomes
• Participants will explore open ended
problems and the use of problem
solving strategies.

• Participants will focus on effective

feedback and assessment practices.

• Participants will apply their knowledge

and understanding to develop a lesson.
Problem Solving Strategies
1. Trial and Error/ Guess and Check
2. Look for a Pattern
3. Make a Model
4. Draw a Picture
5. Make a Table
6. Write a number Sentence
7. Work Backwards
8. Solve a simpler (related) problem
Sample Task

My friend has 10 goldfish. He wants to put

them into two bowls. How many different
ways can my friend put the goldfish into
two bowls?
Tomorrow’s Lesson
Design an open ended warm-up.
• What problem solving strategies could
students use?
• What key questions could you ask to
deepen the thinking in the classroom?
• Record it on half sheet of paper
• Prepare to share
Line Up
- Line up according to a pre-established
criteria.
- Can be used to make small groups (fold
the line, count off by 4's, etc.)
- Promote communication and maximize
student-to-student discourse.
Fixed vs Growth Mindset

At your table, construct a Venn

Diagram that compares a Fixed
Mindset to a Growth Mindset.
Fixed vs Growth Mindset

• Fixed Mindset – you have the qualities

you were born with and they are fixed in
stone
– So if you have to work hard, then you’re
not smart enough.

• Growth Mindset – you can develop

qualities through effort and experience
over time
– Challenges are fun and exciting.
Building a Growth Mindset

• Hear a fixed mindset voice and recognize

it as self-defeating.

• Respond to it with a growth mindset

voice and a growth mindset action.
Listen for a fixed mindset voice
“Are you sure you can do it?”

“We went over that yesterday. Weren’t you

listening?”

“This work/problem will be so easy. ”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Is my answer right?”

How we help students interpret challenges,

failures, and feedback or criticism is a choice.
Growth Mindset Voice
“I’m not sure that I can do it but I can learn
with time and effort. I can’t do this YET.”

“Many successful people have had failures

along the way and still do.”

“If I don’t try, then I automatically fail.”

Take on challenge wholeheartedly
Learn from setbacks/mistakes and try
again
Hear the criticism and act on it
Feedback to avoid

“You did that so quickly. You are really

smart!”

“This is easier for you than for other people.

I’m really proud of you.”

“You are a natural at this.”

Praise to give…effective feedback
“You put in a lot of work on that. You used
several strategies before you found one that
worked. That’s great!”

“I like how you took that challenge and

tackled it.”

“After working hard in this unit, look at the

progress you’ve made.”
3 Levels of Feedback
Task Level
• Provides correction, clarification, cues, correct or incorrect
information etc

Process Level
• direct attention to the processes to accomplish the task
• provide students with different cognitive
processes/strategies
• point to directions that the students could pursue

Self-regulation Level
• be motivational so that students invest more effort or skill
in the task
• enable restructuring understandings

Hattie and Timperley 2007

Value Wrong Answers
My Favorite No
Consider:
• How does the teachers select her
example?

• How does this strategy contribute to a

growth mindset?

• How does this use strategy provide for re-

teaching?
 Create a Culture of Risk Taking
• Provide for productive challenge and struggle

• Praise students on their process, not on

results/success
- Choices, effort, persistence, resilience,
grit…

• It’s not about how quickly you get there

 What is something that you struggled with

but now your are great at it? How did you get there?
Lesson

2.NBT.6. Add up to four two-digit numbers

using strategies based on place value and
properties of operations.
The picture shows islands (the stars)
connected by bridges. To cross a bridge, you
must pay a toll in coins. Develop a plan to
work out the cheapest route between the
islands.
“The introduction on the formal algorithm
is often based on the fear that without
learning the same methods that all of us
grew up with, student will somehow be
disadvantaged”
Van de Walle & Lovin, 2006
Invented Strategies

Benefits of Invented Strategies:

• Base-ten concepts are enhanced

• Students make fewer errors

• Less re-teaching is required

• Invented strategies provide the basis for mental

computation

• Flexible, invented strategies are often faster than the

traditional algorithm

• Invented strategies serve students at least as well on

standardized tests
Taking It Back
As the grade level/band teacher leader at
your school –
1. Fixed/Growth Mindset

Discuss with Principal:

Who? What? When? Where? How?
Break
Arithmagons…
Last session we explored arithmagons.

Some of the patterns we noticed were:

• The numbers in the circles were also
consecutive
• The circle opposite the even number was
always half of that number
Arithmagons…
Do these patterns still apply?
Assessment

The Task:
Take a few minutes to individually reflect
on assessment in your classroom and jot
down as many examples as you can think
of.

Use one post it for each assessment

Assessment
The three overarching types of assessment are:

• Assessment OF learning – occurs when teachers use

evidence of student learning to make judgments on student
achievement against goals and standards

• Assessment FOR learning (formative) – occurs when

teachers use inferences about student progress to inform
their teaching and provide feedback to students to inform
their learning – while it is still going on.

• Assessment AS learning – occurs when students reflect on

and monitor their progress to inform their future learning
goals
Assessment

• Is there an assessment type that is

predominant in our practice?

• Is there an assessment type you would

consider to be under represented?
Overrepresented?
Assessment – Why? What? When?
• Summative - Assessment OF learning

- determining the degree to which a

student has mastered an extended
body of content at a concluding point
in a sequence of learning.
Assessment – Why?, What?, When?
• Formative – Assessment FOR learning:

- emphasizes a teacher’s use of information to do

instructional planning that can effectively and
efficiently move students ahead – includes pre-
assessment
- useful in understanding and addressing students’
interests and approaches to learning
- rarely graded
- provides opportunity for meaningful feedback that
helps students understand areas of proficiency and
areas that need additional attention which is more
useful than grading because students are still
practicing and refining their competencies
Assessment – Why? What? When?
“Students taught by teachers developing the
use of assessment for learning outscored
comparable students in the same schools by
approximately 0.3 standard deviations, both
on teachers produced and external state-
mandated tests. Since one year’s growth as
measured in the TIMSS is 0.36 standards
deviations, the effects of the intervention
[formative assessment] can be seen to
almost double the rate of student learning.
Dylan Wiliam,2007, 2011
“Recent reviews of more than 4000
research investigations show clearly that
when the [formative assessment] process
is well implemented in the classroom, it
can essentially double the speed of
student learning producing large gains in
students’ achievement, and at the same
time, it is sufficiently robust so different
teachers can use it in diverse ways and still
get great results with their students.”
James Popham, 2011
Assessment – Why?, What?, When?
• Assessment AS instruction:

- ensuring that assessment is a key

part of teaching and learning

- assisting students in self-analysis and

becoming more aware of their own
growth relative to learning targets
Assessment
• Of learning
• For learning
• As learning

Which type(s) of assessment have the

greatest potential to increase student
achievement? Why?
Strategies for Effective Formative Assessment…

Text Based Protocol:

1. What information was most compelling from the
article?

2. Which elements of formative assessment, if any,

are habitual in your work?

3. Which elements of formative assessment do you

still have to be deliberate and intentional about?

4. In the conclusion it states, “the support of

colleagues is essential”. How can we support
colleagues with this transition?
CCSSM Instructional Shifts

•Focus
•Coherence
•Procedural Skill/Fluency
•Conceptual Understanding
Rigor
•Application
with equal intensity
Standards For Mathematical Practice
1. Make sense of problems and persevere in
solving them.
2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
3. Construct viable arguments and critique
the reasoning of others.
4. Model with mathematics.
5. Use appropriate tools strategically.
6. Attend to precision.
7. Look for and make us of structure.
8. Look for and express regularity in
repeated reasoning.
 SBAC Math Assessment Claims
• “Students can explain and apply mathematical
Concepts & concepts and interpret and carry out
Procedures mathematical procedures with precision and
fluency.”
• “Students can solve a range of complex well-
Problem posed problems in pure and applied
Solving mathematics, making productive use of
knowledge and problem-solving strategies.”

Communicati
ng Reasoning
Modeling &
Data Analysis
Next Generation Assessment
• Mathematics Preliminary Summative
Assessment Blueprint
- Target Sampling Grade 3

• Claim Column – Assessment Targets

• DOK Column – Hess Cognitive Rigor
Matrix
• What do you notice? Wonder?
Examining Student Work
Work with a partner to:

- Provide feedback that moves learning

forward by forcing students to engage
cognitively with their work.
Current Thinking and Surfacing Gaps…
• The Gap – is there evidence of a gap
between the student’s performance and
the learning goal?

• Current thinking - What did the

instructional task reveal about student
thinking? Where in the work did you see
insights into student thinking? How are
they making sense of ideas, organizing
thoughts, and reasoning?
Developing Good Questions
There are 3 main features to developing good
questions:
1. They require more than remembering a fact
or reproducing a skill.

2. Students learn by answering the questions,

and the teacher learns about each student
from the attempt.

3. There may be several acceptable answers.

Sullivan & Lillburn 1997
Opening the question…
Working in a group of 2 or 3

1. Select a chapter test or quiz from your

text
2. Choose 3 items to revise
3. Display 1 of the items on chart paper
- Show original item
- Show revised item
4. Gallery Walk with Praise/Question/Polish
Taking It Back
As the grade level/band teacher leader at
your school –
1. Fixed/Growth Mindset
2. Changes in Assessment/Implications
for lesson design/instructional practice

Discuss with Principal:

Who? What? When? Where? How?
LUNCH
Warm Up – Tooth Fairy

The Tooth Fairy left me 25 cents. What are

some of the coin combinations she could
have left me?
Collegial Sharing - Wikispace
Backward Lesson Design Process
1. Select an upcoming lesson from text
resource
2. Unpack the standard(s)
3. Develop/create a common assessment
4. Identify key checkpoints for
understanding
5. Select rich task and create 3-5 high
quality questions
6. Record on chart paper
7. Gallery Walk – Praise/Question/Polish
Taking It Back
As the grade level/band teacher leader at
your school –
1. Fixed/Growth Mindset
2. Changes in Assessment/Implications
for lesson design/instructional practice
3. Backward Lesson Design Process

Discuss with Principal:

Who? What? When? Where? How?
“An assessment functions formatively to
the extent that evidence about student
achievement is elicited, interpreted, and
used by teachers, learners, or their peers
to make decision about the next steps in
instruction that are likely to be better, or
better founded, than the decisions they
would have made in the absence of that
evidence.”
Dylan Wiliam 2011