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Eleanor Dougherty, author of the ASCD book Assignments Matter, tells how to help students become better writers.
Sunday, May 25, 2014
How to use strategic problem solving in your business
Many people don’t always realize how being positive and using strategic problem solving can have a huge impact on their business. As human beings, we are not perfect and sometimes we have the tendency to become negative in our thinking and actions.
Fact; did you know that negative thinking and the actions that result from this cost companies $3 billion per year in the U.S. alone?
How can we ensure that we remain positive in our thinking and actions?
There is a very effective road map that I would like to share with you. By no means will change occur overnight, having said that, if you are able to implement one strategy per day, per month you will start to see results. Just like weight loss, anything worth having does take time.
Step 1: Define the situation.
By understanding the current “problem” you are faced with you will be more able to easily handle it.
Step 2: Self talk.
What are you telling yourself about the current situation you are facing? Are you on one hand saying to your team, “don’t worry, this can be easily resolved,” while at the same time internally you are really thing, “there is no way I can fix this.” Self-talk is extremely important to watch.
Step 3: Desired outcome.
Once you have clearly defined your situation you need to think of a solution. It’s important to be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. What is your goal for the problem you are facing?
Step 4: Positive traits.
By following steps 1 through 3 you will be creating a positive environment. If those around you, whether they be management or co-workers, start to recognize your positive and realistic attitude, they will start to develop the same habits and thought processes.
Step 5: Practice, practice, practice.
As a former teacher, it was very important for me to have my lesson plans ready ahead of time. It was very unrealistic for me to create activities on the fly. By preparing and practicing the different questions that my students could have, I would be a better teacher. Likewise, in business, it’s important to “role play” the different outcomes so that you are prepared for the best or the worst.
Step 6: Go.
Once you have understood the situation, you have your goals set and you have practiced what can occur, now is the time to put everything in action. As someone who is well versed in lesson planning, I do highly recommend a plan of execution. It will allow you to be clear and have others see your vision as well.
Step 7: Review.
This is the chance where you get to learn from the decisions and actions you have taken. Were your goals achieved? If not, what can you next time to make them a success?
I wish you all the success in the world. Now go out and BE the difference!
Friday's Rocket Fuel: Career Evaluation Going Into The Holiday Season
By Larry Boyer, Career Coach & Personal Branding Strategist
Before the holiday season is upon you it's time to prepare for the career opportunities that will be coming your way. Whether you're looking for long term career development or something more short term like a new job, the holidays are a great time to get yourself to the next step.
If you're looking for a new job, the holidays can present a great opportunity for you to make your move. The combination of job seekers being busy with holiday activities and mistakenly believing that employers don't hire during the holiday season increase your chances of landing that next position - if you are prepared to act and seize the opportunity.
Where are the opportunities? During the holiday season look to holiday gatherings to let people know you are doing and what you are looking to do. Holiday parties give you the opportunity to talk with people you would not normally meet. In networking these are called weak connections because you don't have a solid relationship with these people. Weak connections are the most likely place you will find someone who can help you. There are many reasons for this but one to think about is that if your close connections could help you they already would have.
Of course to take advantage of these opportunities you need to be prepared. Here are some tips to get ready now, before you get swept up in holiday activities:
Know what you want - Are you looking for a new job? Want to speak somewhere? Connect with someone? Have Materials - Do you have an updated resume? Do you have a presentation? Do you have something to give someone when they ask? Business cards?Elevator Pitch - Do you have a short, engaging description of what you do or what you're looking for? Do you have an empowering request? At a holiday party you want to have an engaging story that invites someone to want to talk with you more.You have 2 - 3 weeks to prepare yourself. Will you be ready?
Effective Coaching by Design
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Christina was a positive, well-intentioned middle school teacher in her third year of practice in an urban school district. She'd made great progress in her first years, but she had a long way to go to build the skill set and knowledge base needed to support her students and manage the demands of the teaching profession. Christina's principal described her as "high-energy, but scattered and inconsistent …. It's hard to get Christina to focus." This teacher's experiences with professional learning reflected her struggles to meet her own worthy ambitions: In the previous year, she'd identified four professional goals and hadn't met any of them.
Coaching made a difference. After a year with a coach, Christina was more focused in her practice, and she had successfully met some of her goals. She grew in a way that made her a more consistently effective middle school educator. Let's look at how coaching made this happen.
Christina's increased focus started the first day she met with her coach, Jan, to determine their work together for the school year. Christina assumed the conversation would be mostly for getting to know each other and would just touch on her goals. "We only had an hour," she recalled. "By the end of that time, I felt connected to Jan, and we'd identified my professional goals …. I was worried about how much time coaching would take, but Jan moved the conversation and got into the heart of the matter."
It wasn't by chance that in Jan's first conversation with Christina she took pains to focus her and identify specific learning goals; it was by design. As director of a coaching initiative for teachers in Oakland, California, I helped Jan prepare to make this initial talk productive. A meeting with the principal of Christina's school—which we'll call Forest View—to hear his thoughts and concerns about specific teachers helped Jan know what approach to take in fostering professional development for her coachees before she met with them.
Given how little time teachers have in their school lives and the magnitude of the work they have to do, every coaching conversation, observation, and interaction must be strategic about improving teacher practice. The coaching model my coaching team implements in Oakland's struggling public schools is targeted, seeks to shift specific teacher behaviors and beliefs, and emerges from a comprehensive school transformation plan.
To see why Jan was effective in focusing Christina, let's look briefly at a few conditions that must be in place for coaching to succeed and then identify a few steps coaches can take to help teachers focus on high-leverage professional goals.
Coaching looks different in every school, district, or organization. Offering a definition at the outset of a coaching relationship is essential to ensure a shared understanding of roles and expectations. I offer this definition: Coaching is a form of professional development with someone who willingly engages in reflection and learning. I emphasize the word willingly to challenge the notion—accepted by many teachers and administrators—that coaching is a tool for fixing people or enforcing a program.
Coaching is a structure through which we learn, a form of learning available to teachers at any stage in their career—and it should be optional. Adults cannot be mandated to learn. Unfortunately, coaches are sometimes deployed to work with struggling teachers who don't want coaching or to ensure that all teachers in a school follow the requirements of a mandatory "improvement" program. We have a long way to go before those working in schools can safely be vulnerable as learners—but we should keep the vision of coaching as work with someone who willingly engages in learning.
Effective coaching, as a strategy for professional learning, doesn't exist in isolation; the strongest coaching programs emerge from comprehensive professional development plans. Coaching is a strategy to deepen a skill set and a knowledge base that a community of educators has committed to learning together.
For example, a district might launch an initiative to build strategies for improving students' speaking and listening skills. A school within that district might offer professional development sessions on how to help students carry on richer academic discussions; that school's science department might explore, through an inquiry cycle, how science students need to approach academic discussions. And considering his or her students' needs, an individual teacher might focus on honing one particular aspect of academic discussions, such as debate structures, for one-on-one coaching.
Coaching that's aligned to a comprehensive professional development plan enables the learner to go deep and wide into a content area, instructional practice, or particular aspect of teaching. And it facilitates alignment between everyone responsible for building a teacher's capacity.
When Christina sat down with Jan to discuss the coming school year, certain parameters had already been established. The faculty had decided to focus intensively on reading across the curriculum for that year. Teachers had attended a week-long summer institute on teaching reading, and each department and grade level had selected annual student achievement goals. In addition, all Forest View teachers were to be evaluated with a new evaluation tool that named a set of high-leverage instructional practices. Site and district leaders had identified several elements of this evaluation tool in which teachers would receive intensive professional development, the assumption being that if teachers were going to be evaluated on certain criteria, they deserved good professional development on those skills.
Within these parameters, Jan and Christina needed to focus on a few powerful learning goals. What coaching offers that other professional learning structures often don't is the opportunity for learning to be differentiated and aligned to an individual's needs. Coaching, therefore, can be precise. Our schools are wonderfully diverse places in regards to both the students and the staff. So a differentiated approach is important to building the capacity of teachers and leaders.
With the teacher evaluation rubric and the reading goals for 7th graders in front of them, Jan and Christina followed a process to guide Christina to her professional learning goals. One of the elements of the evaluation rubric that Christina was eager to improve was developing positive relationships between students. She told Jan, "I hold high academic expectations for my students, and I just expect them to get along and treat one another respectfully. Truth is, I have no idea how to help them build those skills."
In their first conversation, Jan and Christina made the connection between students' ability to treat one another kindly and respectfully and their ability to work in small groups using reciprocal teaching strategies. Christina, who was excited about the training she'd had on how reciprocal teaching improves kids' reading, wanted her goal to be improving how she taught reading strategies. Jan helped her recognize that teaching students how to resolve little conflicts in their groups, support one another when someone got stuck, and respectfully disagree with another person's ideas was a necessary first step. Christina said that their dialogue helped her realize that "7th graders don't just know how to do that stuff …. I needed to teach them that so they could use the reciprocal teaching strategies effectively."
This goal around a positive classroom culture was the first of several that Christina and Jan worked on. Christina also wanted to learn to use data to guide her lesson planning and to use formative assessments effectively. She connected all her goals to the school's broad focus on reading. The language of her goals was drawn from the indicators in the teaching evaluation tool (for instance, "I will increase from a Level 1 to a Level 3 on Standard 2.3B, Student-to-Student Interactions, so that students will demonstrate genuine respect, caring, and support for each other's learning under their own initiative and with my support").
An important guideline that coaches and teachers should use to set goals is that the goal be something the coachee has full control over. Although it's essential to work toward a student achievement goal (no instructional goal should be isolated from what students need), many variables contribute to student achievement. The goal must be grounded in an area in which a teacher can increase skills, knowledge, and capacity.
For example, a goal like, "I will raise student achievement by 80 percent" would be a weak professional practice goal. Christina's goal, "I will develop a positive classroom culture by using positive redirects 95 percent of the time," is better. Christina's professional learning goals for the year were tightly connected to student learning goals. This alignment is crucial—it enables a coach to assess the coaching's effect on student achievement and ensures that the teacher recognizes the connection between his or her own practice and students' success.
Coach and teacher must regularly reflect on the teacher's goals, look at the teacher's progress, and plan any adjustments. Sometimes this process reveals that the goal the client identified was too big—or even was the wrong goal.
Following their initial conversation, Jan drafted a work plan. It articulated the strategic actions Christina would take to meet her goal, actions Jan would take, and actions they'd take together. Developing such a list creates a road map for the coaching journey. The approach coaches on my team use implicitly assumes that a teacher will only reach the desired goals if both coach and educator identify a clear course of action.
Christina and Jan met weekly for one hour. They debriefed lessons Jan had observed, planned lessons together, analyzed student data to determine their next course of action, and viewed video of students meeting in literature circles to look for evidence of good student-to-student interactions. Like all effective coaching duos, they kept at the core of their conversations the reflective process by which a coach guides a coachee to think about her practice and her decisions so that the coachee can determine her next steps. All activities that a coach engages a teacher in are toward that end.
For example, Christina committed to observing a colleague who'd developed protocols for students to use during small-group discussions. With Jan's guidance, Christina watched students refer to sheets that contained sentence stems; noticed the roles students played in their groups (such as facilitator and note taker); and observed how her colleague monitored student learning while allowing students to take charge of their discussions. Inspired, she identified several actions she could take in her classroom.
Christina also chose a book she wanted to read on developing positive classroom communities. Jan previewed this book and identified the highest leverage sections for Christina to read. When they met, Jan offered prompts for reflecting on those sections and, keeping in mind Christina's goals and context, pushed her to commit to implementing certain ideas from the book. This helped Christina focus and emerge from the reading with a few concrete steps she could take.
Jan created a schedule for observations through which she gathered feedback on Christina's progress. She observed Christina for 15–20 minutes almost every week, concentrating on a goal Christina was currently working on. For example, when Christina was focused on her goal around student-to-student interactions, Jan looked for evidence of Christina fostering an environment in which students demonstrated respect, caring, and support for one another's learning. Once Jan heard a student mocking another's reading fluency while Christina stood within earshot. This led to a challenging coaching conversation. Christina had heard the student, but she'd felt uncertain about how to respond. Jan pushed Christina to get in touch with the feelings that were blocking her from taking action, which raised a host of issues related to race and gender. She helped Christina determine what she could do when she heard students disrespecting others.
Professional development is also essential for coaches. Just as Christina's professional learning was strategic and designed, our coaching program intentionally plans professional growth for coaches. Professional learning for coaches includes weekly professional learning opportunities, one-on-one coaching, and a critical friends structure through which coaches support one another.
A systems-thinking approach—one that looks at the big picture as well as the discrete elements like measurable goals and strategic actions—is the best strategy for implementing this kind of good coaching. Such an approach pushes educators to identify the pieces and people who are connected to a program and to consider how each affects the other. For a coach and teacher to arrive at their goals, good conditions for adult learning must be established, a comprehensive professional development plan must be in use, and coaches' learning needs must matter.
By the end of this school year, Christina had met or exceeded her professional goals. Her students had increased their reading skills greatly. Jan and Christina connected the students' improvement to Christina's efficacy in building student relationships, using reciprocal teaching strategies, and making other explicit instructional changes. Her students' achievement reflected the growth Christina made in her own learning.
Elena Aguilar is a manager of coaches in the Oakland Unified School District, California, an education consultant, and author of The Art of Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013).Click on keywords to see similar products:Saturday, May 24, 2014
Response / Mass Customized Learning: Unfairly Maligned
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In March 2014, Educational Leadership ran an article titled, "Personalization: It's Anything But Personal," by Maja Wilson. The article totally misrepresented a vision that is, at its heart, a deeply humanistic, learner-centered approach to learning. Mass customized learning is about each learner becoming an active, engaged partner with real voice in how he or she learns and how he or she demonstrates knowledge or skill.
Reacting against this new vision of learning, Wilson fails to identify a single reason why we should continue to prop up our present time-based, assembly-line approach to schooling. The Industrial Age school worked—in the Industrial Age. We're long past that now, and public schools are getting low marks from nearly everyone.
And that's not the fault of the teacher. It's the fault of the outdated structure of our schools. The last thing that mass customized learning envisions is marginalizing teachers as a result of technology use, as Wilson erroneously asserts. In fact, the teacher's role is of crucial importance in this vision.
So we'd like to set the record straight. The following three foundational principles of the mass customized learning vision are the key to its popularity:
Being uncompromisingly learner-focused. The mass customized learning vision moves decisions and structures based on administrative convenience to decisions and structures based on the needs of learners. The youth walking through our doors come to us as experienced learners. Technology has empowered them; they're different from the students of yesterday. This difference has implications for what, how, and where learners will learn. Specifically, learner outcomes need to be based on the challenges and opportunities that learners will face when they graduate. And after we derive each learner's outcomes, the next question isn't, "How and where will we teach this outcome?" but, "How and where is this outcome best learned?" Some outcomes require direct instruction, whereas some are easily learned through technology.
Faithfully applying intrinsic motivators instead of extrinsic kicks and carrots. Mass customized learning leverages today's customizing technology, enabling learning systems to meet each learner's personal learning needs while simultaneously meeting the learning needs of all other learners. Intrinsically motivated learners are thinking,
It hits my learning level. It'll be a challenge, but I think I can learn it.It fits the way I learn best. I was given alternative ways to learn, and I learn best through video.I find the content interesting. I chose it because I love sports—or fashion.I can see where I'll use this learning. My mom and I created a business plan.Externally motivated learners stop doing things when extrinsic motivators disappear. Intrinsically motivated learners tend to become lifelong learners.
Systematically replacing time-based, assembly-line structures with customized, flexible structures. Unfortunately, today's schools are perfectly designed to get the results we're now getting. Currently, specific students of a specific age must learn specific things on a specific schedule in a specific classroom from a specific teacher using specific materials and methods so they can pass specific tests on specific dates—and only then will the system call them "OK." We propose a different approach. To see how learners can create their own customized, flexible schedules—ones that enable them to learn crucial, relevant outcomes in the mode in which these outcomes "are best learned"—see Chapter 7 of our book Inevitable: Mass Customized Learning or watch "Lori Schedules Her Learning Plan."
The mass customized learning vision, designed straight from the ideal learning experience, is needed and doable. If our description of this approach seems like a 180-degree departure from Wilson's portrayal of it in her article—it is. We can no longer afford to prepare teachers for another generation of outdated, underperforming, Industrial Age schools. Our learners deserve better.
Charles Schwahn and Beatrice McGarvey consult extensively with schools and districts throughout the United States. They are the authors of Inevitable: Mass Customized Learning (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2010).Teaching Argument Writing to ELLs
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How in the world are we supposed to apply the Common Core writing standards to teaching English language learners?
We've been asking that question of ourselves and others over the past two years, and we suspect we're not the only educators doing so. After reviewing the many resources available that attempt to provide guidance to teachers of English language learners (see "Resources of Note") and combining what we've learned through our daily classroom experience, we've developed a tentative answer to that question.
Educators need to keep in mind three crucial elements when teaching writing to English language learners (ELLs) in the context of the Common Core State Standards:
Students should begin by reading more informational texts than they did before—these can include closed-captioned videos and digital-supported forms—and they should engage in close reading. Teachers should help students focus not only on comprehending the texts but also on inferring deeper meanings, identifying the writer's craft, and seeking patterns in the text. There should be a strong connection between reading and writing.As students read in preparation for writing an argument, they should look for evidence they can use to inform their valid and logical claims and to critique other claims and evidence they might read.In their writing, students should use the structure, vocabulary, and style that best suits their purpose, topic, and audience. Teachers should provide ample opportunities for students to develop and use higher-level academic vocabulary.Let's see what this looks like in the classroom with English language learners at three different levels of proficiency.
One way to fit problem/solution writing into the Common Core standards' argument category is by ensuring that students conclude their written pieces by choosing one of their possible solutions as the "best" one and supporting it with evidence.
When working with beginners, teachers can use a process originally developed by Brazilian educator Paolo Freire and modified by the Peace Corps.1 This process is designed to connect the challenges that students face in their lives outside school with language and literacy instruction. Here's how we introduced this strategy in a series of short lessons that took place over three consecutive days.
We started out by creating a word chart of problem/solution academic vocabulary, including such words as problem, cause, effect, solution, evidence, and reason. Students translated these words into their home languages, illustrated their definitions, and made a list of common English synonyms. Then we showed a short video clip of the scene in the film Les Misérables in which the main character is arrested for stealing bread to feed his sister's hungry family. The English subtitles reinforced the dialogue that the students were hearing.
We then asked students to describe what they saw. On small whiteboards, they wrote comments such as "in old city," "the man broke window," "he took food," "man run," and "police." We displayed these responses for the class.
Next, we asked students to share what problem they thought the clip portrayed. We modeled this concept in various ways—for example, by saying, and adding the appropriate sound effects, "My stomach is growling. What is the problem?" Students then used the sentence starter, "The problem is …" to write out their responses ("the family is hungry"). Most students used similar words, which we also displayed on the overhead. We then asked students to identify, among those phrases they initially used to describe what they saw, evidence that this was indeed the problem. Before this, we had talked about how the comment "in old city" didn't show evidence of the family being hungry, whereas "he took food" did.
We then asked students what they thought caused the problem, using the sentence starter, "The problem is caused by …." Students wrote such comments as "man not have job" and "rich people take all money."
Next, we asked students what they thought were the effects of the problem. Using the sentence starters, "One effect is …" and "A second effect is …," students wrote such responses as "the family gets sick" and "they die."
We asked students if they, their family members, or their friends had ever experienced a similar problem. Some responded, "We knew poor people in my country," "I see poor people," and "I poor."
Students shared the solution—how they responded to that problem—by drawing an illustration or using the sentence frame, "I (we, they) solved the problem by …." One student responded, "I see a family poor in my country, and I help with food, money, and more." We then had students talk about other ideas for how to respond, using the sentence starter, "One solution is …." Students said, "give them jobs," "get help from government," and "ask people for help."
In the past, we would have asked students to make a poster that described the problem and solutions both in words and images and then called it a day. However, in light of the Common Core standards, we instead had students combine the sentences we had written with the help of the sentence starters into a paragraph:
The problem is hungry family. The problem is caused by man not having job. One effect is the family gets sick. A second effect is family die. One solution is give them jobs. Another solution is ask people for help.
Finally, we had students add one more sentence to their paragraph, which required extensive teacher modeling, student drawing, and labeling: "I think the best solution is__ because__." Wrote one student, "I think the best solution is to learn a new job because he can get money."
This example shows how to use students' prior knowledge in conjunction with explicit academic language and grammar support. The activity offers repeated opportunities for students to reinforce their listening, speaking, and writing skills, including being able to focus on just one or two grammatical issues, such as subject-verb agreement. (For all English language learners, and especially for beginners, it's crucial to not go overboard and correct every single grammatical error.) We addressed grammar instruction through the use of concept attainment, an approach we'll address later in this article.
In addition to text and video clips, teachers can also use photos to introduce the problem. In fact, to make the lesson even more student-centered, we've often had students identify problems they'd like to study and contribute photos, text, or video clips that they've found to illustrate them.
One of our guiding principles is to look at our students through the lens of their assets. This approach is reflected in a project that our intermediate English language learners complete—comparing their neighborhood (where our inner-city school is located) with the wealthiest neighborhood in Sacramento, California (called the Fabulous Forties). Students write a persuasive essay about which is better, and 95 percent of the time they choose … their neighborhood. How do they reach that conclusion?
First, using a word chart, we preteach about 10 vocabulary words, such as affordable and demographics. Next, on a handout we prepare, students identify and rate the qualities they value in a neighborhood they want to live in. These include such items as ethnic diversity, people who share their ethnicity, affordable housing, bus transportation, and so on. They also add their own suggestions. Students organize these items into categories, such as money, people, and services.
The next step involves going to the computer lab to research demographic data about the neighborhood in which students live. (Countless free websites provide this information by zip code.) We then go on a field trip to the neighborhood, and students note—and photograph—which of their valued qualities they see. They also document what they see on a Google Maps printout of the neighborhood.
Both in the computer research and on the field trip, we emphasize that students are to identify evidence that supports the claims that their neighborhood has or doesn't have their valued qualities. Back in the classroom, students use their observations and research data to review their list of important neighborhood qualities and put a check mark on the ones located in their neighborhood.
Then it's time for the Fabulous Forties. We revisit the computer lab, where students use the same neighborhood research form to get data for that zip code. They write these data next to their home neighborhood data, using a different color pencil.
We take a field trip to the Fabulous Forties and repeat the same touring process we used in our school neighborhood. Back at school, students once again review their list of neighborhood qualities and put check marks in a different color next to the ones they feel are well represented in the Fabulous Forties. They then take a sheet of paper and draw a line down the middle, labeling one side "School Neighborhood" and the other "Fabulous Forties." On the basis of the check marks they made, they then list the qualities that each zip code has. The school neighborhood typically has a huge list, whereas the Fabulous Forties usually has few.
It's not unusual for students to comment about how the houses are much more attractive and the streets are cleaner in the Fabulous Forties. Nevertheless, they typically highlight many more appealing qualities they feel the Fabulous Forties are missing, such as ethnic diversity, mass transit, nearby stores, and affordable housing.
Finally, with all this information in hand, students use a simple essay outline, with appropriate scaffolds like sentence starters, to formulate an argument that explains which neighborhood they think is better and that provides evidence to support their position. The teacher then reviews the drafts to identify common grammar and spelling errors to address using the concept attainment instructional strategy.
In this strategy, the teacher puts correct spelling or grammar usage of a particular rule under a column labeled "Yes" on the overhead and puts incorrect usage under a "No" column (see fig. 1). The teacher shows students a "Yes" example and then a "No" example, with other similar examples covered by a blank piece of paper. The teacher gradually uncovers each sentence until students conclude what the common denominator is—in other words, what the "yes" examples have in common (in fig. 1, it's correct subject-verb agreement), thus determining the error and its correction.
The teacher puts an example with correct spelling or grammar usage under a column labeled "Yes" on the overhead and an incorrect example under a "No" column and gradually uncovers each sentence until students determine what the sentences in the "Yes" column have in common. (The rows must be staggered to permit the teacher to uncover one example at a time.)
This figure shows examples with correct and incorrect subject-verb agreement.
Houses are cheap in our neighborhood.
Houses is cheap in our neighborhood.
The bus stop is close to my house.
The bus stop are close to my house.
The people in my neighborhood are from different cultures.
The people in my neighborhood is from different cultures.
In various years, we've had students create infographics comparing the two neighborhoods. We've also asked them to design their ideal neighborhoods and write about why they designed them the way they did.
In this neighborhood comparison project, students identify the criteria they'll use to determine their claim—not the other way around. They're doing close reading of digital texts and field research to identify additional evidence that supports their claims. Finally, the concept attainment approach gets students to use an assisted discovery process to improve grammar and spelling on the basis of examples from their own writing.
Many writing tasks that students will be asked to do involve reading and responding to the arguments and proposals of others. Understanding how authors persuade their readers helps students both analyze and write arguments. Therefore, we started this school year by introducing our advanced ELLs to ethos (reputation, credibility); logos (reasoning, facts, and statistics); and pathos (emotions).
We introduced students to the basic meanings of these concepts by having them create visual representations of each word. For example, students drew pictures of experts, such as doctors and scientists, to represent ethos; a graph or percentages to represent logos; and people with various expressions on their faces to illustrate pathos. We drew a three-way Venn diagram to show how authors might use two rhetorical appeals to persuade readers or, to be really persuasive, a combination of all three.
The students were now ready to identify the use of these persuasive strategies in magazine advertisements. One student cut out an ad for face cream, which featured the statistic, "9 out of 10 women saw a decrease in wrinkles" as well as a photo of a woman laughing with her friends. Using the following sentence starters, one student wrote, "This advertisement is using pathos because the woman feels young and happy with her friends" and "It also uses logos because it contains a statistic."
We then helped students practice another key skill in argument writing: distinguishing between claims and evidence. We selected an issue our school is facing—whether to allow the use of smartphones as a resource in class. Students practiced identifying claims by looking at good examples ("Students should be allowed to access smartphones during a lesson"; "Smartphones are a valuable resource in the classroom") as well as bad ones ("Many students have phones in their backpacks"; "Smartphones are not allowed in many schools"). Asking students to explain what the good examples had in common helped them identify the features of effective claims—mainly, that they're specific and debatable (that is, they have more than one side).
We used the same process for teaching students about effective evidence by showing them good examples (evidence that was relevant and sufficient to support a claim), such as, "Studies show that the use of smartphones to conduct research in the classroom can increase learning." We also showed them bad examples (evidence that was insufficient or irrelevant, or that contradicted the claim), such as, "My friend likes to use his smartphone in class."
Once students had familiarized themselves with effective claims and evidence, we moved on to a close reading of a text on the use of smartphones in the classroom. As we read the article aloud, we guided students to highlight the author's claims in one color and the evidence in a different color. This helped students see how the author organized his argument, sometimes presenting evidence first and concluding with a claim and at other times introducing the claim, providing evidence, and restating the claim at the end. In addition, we provided support for unfamiliar vocabulary.
Students labeled in the margins the different types of evidence presented (facts, statistics, interviews, quotations) and appeals used (ethos, logos, pathos). We prompted students to write in the margins why they agreed or disagreed with the author's claim and which piece of evidence they found the most convincing and why.
Students then created a storyboard illustrating the key ideas in each paragraph. They wrote key claims and evidence in their own words and drew a sketch to represent these ideas. Students used this visual summary to assist them in writing a summary of the article.
Now students were more ready to formulate their own claims. We gave them the following prompt: "What is the author's position on the use of smartphones in the classroom? To what extent do you agree with his position? Support your position with evidence from your personal experience, observations, or reading, including this article."
Students broke down the prompt by underlining keywords and numbering the steps they'd need to take. We showed them how to create their own graphic organizer, which they could use to brainstorm ideas. For example, students drew three boxes for each of the three parts of the prompt. In the first box, which was labeled "What is the author's position?" students used their visual summary to jot down notes. In the second box, labeled "To what extent do you agree with his position?" students used the annotations they made on the text to begin noting what they agreed or disagreed with. In the third box, labeled "Support," students listed possible evidence they could use to support their claims. As students began drafting, we offered sentence frames ("I agree to an extent that ….") to help structure their arguments.2
In this example, students identified the features of effective claims and evidence and explored these features through close reading by making both their annotations and their thinking visual. Graphic organizers and sentence frames, as well as preteaching and regular reinforcement of academic vocabulary, served as scaffolds for their learning. Responding to a writing prompt was less overwhelming because students learned how to create their own graphic organizers to support their thinking and writing.
In all three of these examples, we gave students opportunities to practice evaluating claims and evidence and then formulate their own claims in response to this research. This is the basis of much writing in the Common Core standards, in college, and in life: We read and listen to the claims and proposals of others, and we respond and join the conversation. Providing English language learners the tools they need to join this type of academic discourse is essential to their growth, both in English and as learners.
Do help students connect prior knowledge, make inferences, identify features of a text type, examine the author's purpose and style, and find the meanings of keywords that are crucial to understanding. Model and think aloud so students hear and see the reading strategies you're using. Choose texts that are worthy of a close read—ones that relate to the teaching goal and topic of study and are at an appropriate level of challenge for your students.
Don't discourage students from tapping prior knowledge. Don't do a close read of every text; students can practice the skills on their own with easier texts. Remember that the teacher should not be doing all the work. Students should be engaged and work collaboratively.
Do remind students of the argument skills they use in their everyday lives. Teach students to identify the difference between claims and evidence—that they must first examine data and evidence and then develop claims on the basis of this exploration. Give students multiple opportunities, both collaboratively and independently, to practice the thinking involved in argumentation. Give students the language support they need (such as academic phrases and sentence frames) to introduce, develop, and support their claims.
Don't ask students to formulate a claim about an unfamiliar issue or topic and come up with evidence to support it. Don't teach the skills of argumentation in an isolated lesson.
Do evaluate the texts and types of writing students will be working with and teach the academic language and structures students will need to access these tasks. Help students practice using this vocabulary in the context of meaningful interactions with their peers and by giving them the opportunity to use these words and structures in authentic reading and writing situations.
Don't just give students lists of vocabulary words in isolation. Don't expect students to learn how to use these academic words by simply looking up the meanings.
Do teach the grammatical structures associated with a particular text type in context. Identify good and bad examples in context to help students recognize and then apply the desired structures in their own writing.
Don't teach isolated grammatical skills out of context. Don't expect students to transfer these grammatical structures to their own writing if they're only filling out worksheets or doing grammar drills.
1 See Teaching English as a Foreign Language to Large, Multilevel Classes (Peace Corps, 1992). Available at http://files.peacecorps.gov/multimedia/pdf/library/M0046_tefllarge.pdf
2 See Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein's book, They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing (Norton, 2009) for academic words and sentence frames that help students structure their arguments, introduce evidence, agree or disagree with the claims of others, address counterclaims, and formulate strong conclusions.Larry Ferlazzo and Katie Hull-Sypnieski teach English language learners and mainstream students at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, California. They are coauthors of The ESL/ELL Teacher's Survival Guide (Jossey-Bass, 2012).Click on keywords to see similar products:
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Getting the Boss Onboard
How often have you been in a meeting or a facilitated group only to see your collective progress thwarted by the group’s formal leader or manager? This is a common dilemma given that the manager is responsible for the product of his/her group and is therefore compelled to be integrally involved in what the group does and how they do it. Leaders impede creative solutions even further when they simply can’t remain in an unbiased facilitative role given the pressure of their accountability on the decisions made.
So is there any way around this dilemma? In my study of this question, I came upon a simple facilitation strategy called The Interaction Method, that seems to address this issue very nicely.
What is the Interaction Method?
Authors Michael Doyle and David Straus of How to Make Meetings Work, summarize their method in this way. “The Interaction Method rests on four well-defined roles and responsibilities which together form a self-correcting system of checks and balances. All four roles are equally important. Each contributes to the health and productivity of the group. No one person is in the traditional leadership role of having to ‘save’ the group. Instead, everybody has a stake in the outcome and is equally responsible for the group’s successes and failures.”
How Does the Interaction Method Work?
The Interaction Method requires that four roles be occupied and executed: Facilitator, Group Members, Manager/Chairperson, and Recorder.
Facilitators know that the quality of group decisions and problem-solving made by well-facilitated groups are higher than those made alone. And better solutions and decisions by definition mean higher profits. Further, people leaving a well facilitated meeting feel better going back to work, working harder toward group goals and not requiring recovery from lousy meetings. This information should provide useful clues about the benefits of facilitation to leaders of less than optimal teams.
Consensus Decision Philosophy
So how does a leader let go of the process enough to engage in a consensus decision-making process? Using the Interaction Method for consensus decision-making, the leader temporarily steps out of the top of the hierarchy and assumes a position in a horizontal group. As a participant, the leader will be happy with a consensus decision because, by definition a consensus decision means all participants are happy with it.
Since the leader is a participant, his/her satisfaction in the decision is a given. If consensus can’t be reached, the leader makes the decision. This can still motivate the group since they are part of the process and have the opportunity to make a consensus decision. Even if consensus isn’t reached, they tend to buy in to decision anyway since they were involved in process.
How the Boss Stays the Boss
As we implied earlier, meetings often go awry because managers try to play too many roles. It’s hard to play the “heavy” decision-maker and still run an open meeting. According to the Interaction Method, as a leader, you can’t be neutral, so why try? Besides, you have the big picture and need to contribute all you know about the problem. You can turn the running of your meeting over to a facilitator but still be in command. You decide on the agenda items, the process for managing them, who should attend, and how much participation you want from your staff. Ultimately, you get better input to make better decisions using this approach.
During the meeting and at all times you retain power to stop what’s happening and change the format. You can’t give away your power and responsibility even if you want to, so don’t pretend to. But if you want help from your group, be realistic about providing enough time and acceptance of what they bring to the table. Lay out constraints at the beginning then participate as a regular group member. Don’t be neutral, just express your ideas and share your ideas and knowledge. Support the facilitator encouraging him to play his role understanding it’s hard to treat you as an equal. So reinforce him for calling you on things. Try to talk less and listen more. Don’t let the facilitator go on to the next agenda item until enough is done and you feel closure on the present one.
In summary, using the Interaction Method, the boss continues to hold the power of decision, while the Facilitator manages the process, maintaining impartial freedom of speech for all participants. This solves a common problem with managers taking up the air time, and creating less than trusting atmosphere where all that should be said may not be said. Assign a facilitator who doesn’t influence meeting content and if they do, have them removed as the facilitator. If you’re a group leader and you have an issue you want dealt with collaboratively, step down as facilitator and into your role as manager and let someone else facilitate.
Action
How might you use the Interaction Method as a group leader? What group leaders or managers do you know with whom you might share this method? Please click on the Add Your Comments and tell us about it.
EL Takeaways
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Friday, May 2, 2014
Friday's Rocket Fuel: What Is Your Next Step for Career Development?
By Larry Boyer, Career Coach & Personal Branding Strategist
Most of the time we think about our career development in terms of long term advancement. Sometimes we think about short term goals, especially around the annual review process. Very rarely do we on our own think about
What is the next step I can take today in the direction I want to take my career?
There is no GPS system or Google Maps for your career where you put in where you are today in your career and where you'd like to be and then you get a step by step list of instructions - spend 16 months doing data entry then move to 46 months of developing projections, lead a volunteer group for your leadership development, and so on. You have to map out your career the way explorers did. Gather stories from others who may have been there before, be prepared for the unexpected and go forth. But always know where you next step is and how it is bringing you closer to the place you want to go.
What is one step you take today to move you in the direction of your career goal?
Labor Day In A White Collar World: Three Tips for Leaders
By Larry Boyer, Career Coach & Personal Branding Strategist
As a leader in professional environment have you thought about the meaning of Labor Day and how you can on its spirit for yourself, your team and coworkers? For most of us these days Labor Day represents just another day off or perhaps a day to even catch up on work that has been piling up. But is there a way that you can honor the holiday in a way that is meaningful to those you work with?
The Labor Holiday that we celebrate today in the US has its origins in the violent struggle between industrial workers and industrialists/capitalists in the late 1800s. The holiday is most directly linked with the Pullman Strike in 1894 that saw the shut down of most of the rail system in US and the deaths of 30 workers and over $80million in damage. To this day the causes of the strike affect the views Americans have of workers, unions, and capitalists. The Labor Day holiday was signed into law a mere six days the end of the strike to honor the American worker.
How well do you related to Labor Day's historical events? Are they applicable to you? These days it's difficult to relate to living in company towns and other issues the led to the strike. However there is no shortage of bad feelings between staff and management at all levels in the organization. The American and global economies have changed significantly since the 1800s, including a significant rise in the number and types of white collar jobs, especially those that are considered managerial or "exempt". Most professionals these days fall into this category managerial professionals and do not neatly fall into either category represented by the sides of the Pullman Strike. In your position as an accountant, risk manager, economist, mid-level manager, or other professional what how can honor the spirit of the American worker in the office? As a leader what can you do to honor the people who work for you and with you?
Three Tips For Leaders To Appreciate Their Teams
Say Thank You: When was the last time you said thank you to the people on your team? Not just a passing "thanks" but an genuine, heartfelt thank you that includes a statement about what you are thankful for. One of the top complaints of workers, at any level, is they do not feel appreciated. For more ideas see Giving Thanks: A Time to Express Gratitude For Your Career Success.Be A Mentor: Showing that you care about your team members career by helping them achieve professional goals is another way to show that you value them. It's all too easy to see somone in a particular role, to rely on them to perform that job and take for granted they their current job is but one stop in their career path. While you may need someone to fulfill this role for a long time it's important to remember that over time staff will want to grow into other positions. Understand what it is they want to do and help them get the experience and knowledge they need to progress.Give a Gift: As a leader you depend on your team to be successful. While the company pays their salary and yours it's important to recognize that your pay depends on them too. Buy members of your team a small gift to show them that they matter to you personally and to acknowledge that you benefit from them just as the company does. Whether a book, a trinket or lunch make it something unique and special to the person.As part of your leadership development make it a point appreciate the people who work for you. Help them be successful and feel appreciated.
"Technology is Everyone's Business" - Career Strategic Planning
By Larry Boyer, Career Coach & Personal Branding Strategist
Earlier this year PricewaterhouseCoopers released its 2014 US CEO Survey. This document is a road map for business trends in the US and globally. More importantly for you, it is a glimpse into the future that will impact your career, enabling you to start preparing for the future now. Wouldn't it be nice to know skills you should start learning now so that you are well positioned for future success rather than the unemployment line?
The quote in the title from this article sums up well the trends in the business place and for career development. "Technology is Everyone's Business" (p. 7). Technology encompasses a variety of skills from programming to analytics to robotics, as you can see in the accompanying chart.
Knowledge of technology is no longer just for the IT department. You need to know technology. If you're in Marketing, you need to know technology. If you're in Finance you need to know technology. If you're in Sales. And so on.
Granted, the technology you need to know will vary from role-to-role and business-to-business, but to be clear, the ability to work with and leverage technology is a skill that is growing in importance. What will also be critical to your long term career success is your ability to learn and adapt to new technologies as they become better, faster and omnipresent.
If you are looking to secure your career path and economic future, knowing where the industry you are working in is heading is important. The chart above shows where companies are investing in 2014. Number 1 is Business Analytics with 44% of CEOs citing it as their top area of investment. Close behind is Socially Enabled Business Processes. If you are looking for an area to advance your career, these areas are ones that are sure to be short in both staffing and leadership. Investing in yourself will position you to take advantage of these trends.
You also need to be looking forward about the changes in technology. What is hot today may be obsolete tomorrow. In fact 57% of CEOs are concerned about how fast technology is changing and being able to adapt quickly enough. As the CEO of your career, the Business of You, you too should be concerned enough to keep an eye on emerging trends. In business analytics technology and tools like Hadoop, Pig, Hive, R, Tableau and others are relative new comers. How long will they be around? As companies invest heavily in these technologies the pace of change may slow because no company will be able to make large capital expenditures repeatedly.
What can you do?
When you look at your career as a business you look at the environment you are operating in and look for the external threats and opportunities. Often threats are just opportunities that are disguised as the need to adapt or evolve from what you are today into something new tomorrow.
Follow industry trends to see how technology is being used in the area you work in. Right now marketing is being transformed by Big Data Analytics as businesses are able to collect and analyze vast amounts of data from actual customers and potential customers from sales and social media. This information is further influencing other parts of business from product design to packaging to delivery.
Work is often involved. You will need to do some research to learn the latest trends. Become a member of a professional association. Join industry groups on LinkedIn. Attend Meet ups in your area. Perhaps you'll need to do training outside of work hours or spend your own money on training to keep up.
With all this change you will also want to write this down and develop a career strategic plan. Even though it may need to adapt and evolve as the technology changes, writing out your career strategic plan helps you define what you want and a direction to to start moving, even if you change it later.
For related articles on career strategic planning see:
Career Development: Achieve More With Career Strategic Planning
Third Step to Building Your Career: Develop a Strategic Career Plan
Business Trends Should Influence Your Career Strategic Planning
For more information on how to prepare your career for the rapidly changing business world of the 21st Century download our free ebook by clicking the button below.
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Business Trends Should Influence Your Career Strategic Planning
By Larry Boyer, Career Coach & Personal Branding Strategist
A recent Business Insider article, Here's What Banking And Money Will Be Like 30 Years From Now, By Geoff Williams highlights the reasons why you need to stay abreast of business trends in managing your career. Why Mr. Williams article about the future of banking is not about career development, the implications for jobs and career growth in the banking industry are clear if you start to think about them. And while I use this article and the banking industry as an example, the same can be seen in careers in other fields as well.
In the article Mr. Williams uses an example where a couple of banks are now testing 3-D video banking. He also discusses historical changes in the banking sector from in-person service, to the rise of ATMs, internet banking and now mobile banking. And while these new services offer customers a better banking experience, people currently in the work force as well as new people entering the workforce need to be aware of the trends and how they affect jobs - perhaps your job and your career.
While it is difficult to say if these changes overall produce or reduce the number of jobs over all, it is clear that the types of jobs afforded by these opportunities are different. Take for instance the rise of ATMs. Banks were able to save money by reducing hours, staff or even branches by installing ATMs. Less of a need for bank tellers. However more people were now needed to build ATMs, deliver them and install them. While some jobs disappeared, others were created. They are just different jobs requiring different skills and interests.
This simple example illustrates what you need to be aware of regarding business trends and how they will impact your career, The Business of You. How will the rise of a new technology influence your current work? Will it make your work easier? More demanding? Will you need training? Will it reduce or eliminate the need for your position? Will it create a better position for you in your company or at another company?
Chances are you are already aware of the trends in your industry. You may even be making plans for your company to follow these trends and take advantage of them. But, how often do you step back and use this information and apply it to your career planning?
A SWOT Analysis For Your Career
As part of a business's strategic planning process they will often conduct a SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for :
StrengthsWeaknessesOpportunities ThreatsYou should be conducting a SWOT Analysis for your career as well. What are your strengths and weaknesses. Not just personally but interacting with the market place as well. What Opportunities do you see that you can move into. Think more broadly than just the next job you want. As illustrated by the banking example, what opportunities would someone who is a bank teller have in a world of mobile banking? And threats are there coming from the market place. Will your career survive an industry shift?
With proper analysis and planning you can reduce the chance of being caught off guard and practically eliminate the chance of being unprepared for changes. You are the owner of your career. No one else. You are the one responsible for your career. As the CEO of the Business of You, what are you doing to prepare your business to move forward and thrive?
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