Marshall Memo 768
A Weekly Round-up of Important Ideas and Research in K-12 Education
January 7, 2019
1. Good cop, bad cop: Can principals be coaches as well as evaluators?
2. A better time-management strategy than to-do lists
3. Respect for physical education
5. Supporting EL students in high-school math classes
6. Easing the transition for elementary English learners
7. Teaching young children about boundaries and consent
8. Another variable in A.D.H.D. diagnosis
9. A letter from a disappointed mother
“[T]elling others what to do, especially professionals, is rarely a good strategy for change… Coaching is about empowering others to solve their own problems rather than solving the problems for them.”
Jim Knight, Christian Van Nieuwerburgh, John Campbell, & Sharon Thomas (see #1)
“Working hard and trying your best is sometimes not actually what’s required. The alternative – getting the right thing done at the right time – is a better outcome for all.”
Marc Zao-Sanders (see item #2)
“The gymnasium is the room that I teach in, but I am a physical education teacher.”
A maxim among physical education teachers (see item #3)
“Izzy, did you ask a good question today?”
The question that the mother of 1944 Nobel physics laureate Isidor Rabi asked him every day when he got home from school – quite different from the query of most other mothers in his neighborhood: “So? Did you learn anything today?” Rabi says that his mother’s daily prod made him a scientist; quoted in “The Role of Questioning and Deep Thinking in the Learner-Ready School Library” by Kathryn Roots Lewis in Knowledge Quest, January/February 2019 (Vol. 47, #3, p. 4-5), no e-link
“I think that helping kids become good human beings, that has never changed. That is a constant… and has always been my essential question for the year.”
Secondary teacher Heidi Crumrine, quoted in “Evolving Classrooms, Evolving
Instruction” by Paul Barnwell in Council Chronicle, Winter 2018 (Vol. 28, #2, p. 6-11);
no e-link; Barnwell can be reached at [email protected].
“Coaching has quickly become one of the most popular forms of professional development in North American schools,” say Jim Knight (University of Kansas), Christian van Nieuwerburgh (University of East London), John Campbell (Growth Coaching International), and Sharon Thomas (The Instructional Coaching Group) in this article in Principal Leadership. They believe it’s possible for principals, busy as they are, to engage in non-evaluative, non-directive coaching that improves teaching and learning. Here’s how:
•Treat teachers as partners. “[T]elling others what to do, especially professionals, is rarely a good strategy for change,” say the authors. In coaching conversations, leaders should resist the urge to give advice, instead treating teachers as thoughtful decision-makers who have considerable knowledge and experience and most of the time know what they’re doing.
•Listen. When principals are in coach mode, they should tune in to teachers’ world, say Knight, van Nieuwerburgh, Campbell, and Thomas: “Listening, then, is not a trick to manipulate people into doing what the principal wants; rather, listening is an action grounded in a genuine desire to hear the teacher’s perspective.” That means:
“How Timeboxing Works and Why It Will Make You More Productive” by Marc Zao-Sanders in Harvard Business Review, December 12, 2018, https://bit.ly/2zXvvnd
In this article in Principal Leadership, Ingrid Johnson (Grand Valley State University) and Mike Ginicola (Stratford Public Schools, CT) push back on some common mistaken notions about physical education:
•Misconception #1: Physical education is “gym.”Actually, physical education is one of 18 core subjects identified in the ESSA legislation, and it’s vital to students’ futures and the health of the nation. “The gymnasium is the room that I teach in,” say the teachers, “but I am a physical education teacher.” Johnson and Ginicola bemoan the fact that only Oregon and D.C. meet suggested minimum requirements for minutes of physical education.
•Misconception #2: Gym is a time for students to burn off excess energy. Yes, students are active during class, but the ultimate goal is applying what they learn in their lives. Physical education teachers should be able to say whatstudents will be learning in each class (standards, goals, focus, objectives), whythey are learning it (its role in increasing physical literacy), and how they will knowwhen they are successful (feedback and self-monitoring).
•Misconception #3: Dodgeball and kickball are fun. “Human target” games should never be played, say Johnson and Ginicola; they cause injuries and mental health problems.
•Misconception #4: Students should be playing full-sided team sports. Actually, small-sided games are better, optimizing each student’s skill practice and contact time with equipment.
•Misconception #5: The focus should be on competitive sports. Only about half of students will engage in this kind of athletic activity in high school, and a mere five percent will do so as adults. That’s clearly not the best focus for K-12 physical education.
•Misconception #6: Physical education steals time from academics. In fact, say Johnson and Ginicola, high-quality physical education can teach and reinforce math, reading, writing, and science concepts, and by middle school, teachers can inject additional content. What’s more, research has shown that regular physical education improves students’ focus and achievement in academic classrooms.
•Misconception #7: There’s no meaningful assessment in physical education. In a good class, students’ cognitive, affective, and psychomotor skills are measured against national standards. How hard students try, and how quickly they change clothes, should not be part of the assessment picture.
•Misconception #8: Gym is really about planning time for elementary classroom teachers. This is a hot-button respect issue for physical education teachers. The fact that art, music, phys. ed., and other “specials” create prep periods for homeroom teachers “should in no way diminish what students learn during that time,” say Johnson and Ginicola. “Additionally, students should not be held back from physical education lessons because they did not complete classroom work or had disruptive classroom behavior.”
“The bottom line,” conclude the authors: “Quality physical education programs are an essential component of the well-rounded education of our young people… It’s time to put an end to old-fashioned gym class and start holding physical education teachers to the same standards and expectations as other teachers in school.”
“Fit to Learn” by Ingrid Johnson and Mike Ginicola in Principal Leadership, January 2019 (Vol. 19, #5, p. 14-17), https://www.nassp.org/2019/01/01/fit-to-learn-january-2019/; the authors can be reached at [email protected]and [email protected].
In this Cult of Pedagogyinterview by Jennifer Gonzalez, instructional coach Peg Grafwallner describes how she and a high-school chemistry teacher improved the note-taking skills of a class of Milwaukee sophomores. Their teaching strategy was to expose students to four note-taking styles arrayed in learning stations around the classroom:
- Cornell notes
- A graphic organizer
- A concept map
- Annotation
Each station had a completed exemplar of that strategy for a different page from the textbook (see the article link below for visuals of these). Stations also had copies of their note-taking templates (the annotation station had copies of the textbook page to be annotated).
Students were introduced to the activity, given four pages from the textbook (different from the pages used in the exemplars), and asked to spend 15 minutes at each station implementing its strategy on one of their pages. Students spread out and started reading the textbook page and applying that station’s style as they took notes. The room was silent at first, but then students started chatting about what they were doing, which Grafwallner and the teacher encouraged as they circulated. Every 15 minutes, a timer went off and students moved to a new station.
After an hour, students had finished and were asked to debrief with groupmates, and then had a whole-class discussion. Here were the main takeaways:
“Power Lesson: Note-Taking Stations” by Jennifer Gonzalez and Peg Grafwallner in The Cult of Pedagogy, December 16, 2018,https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/note-taking-stations/
In this article in Mathematics Teacher, Manqian Zhao (University of Connecticut) and Karen Lapuk (Goodwin College Magnet Schools) suggest five ways to help English learners succeed in high-school mathematics classes:
•Build cultural background knowledge. Although Arabic numerals and basic formulations are almost universal, mathematics language is different from everyday speech, and it has different “dialects” around the world – for example, there are different ways to solve long division problems in Puerto Rico, Vietnam, Poland, Colombia, and Laos. “Without awareness of cultural differences,” say Zhao and Lapuk, “some teachers might identify EL students as having limited mathematics knowledge; however, the truth is that they know how to do mathematics, they just do not know how to do it ‘our way.’ Acknowledging different methods of solving problems is important, especially when students understand in a systematic way how to get the correct answer.” Students might be given a short questionnaire at the beginning of the year to assess their knowledge (e.g., metric measurement, U.S. money), skills, and ways of solving problems.
•Build math vocabulary. Code-switching between languages and explicitly addressing different ways of saying numbers is helpful. For example, the Chinese number words for 11, 12, and 13 translate as ten one, ten two, andten three, and the French word for 90 is quatre-vingt-dix– 4 x 20 + 10. It’s also helpful to draw attention to cognates that are similar across languages – for example, the prefix tri- means three in English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. Students might create a chart comparing attributes of shapes (triangle, octagon) in their native language and English: name, attributes, a real-life object, and a sentence in English.
•Dealing with word problems. “For EL students, decoding a traditional word problem can be difficult, particularly when they are not invested in the story or do not understand key words or even names,” say Zhao and Lapuk. “These problems are not presented as a narrative, as one would read in an English class, but as a descriptive puzzle that students need to decode.” It’s helpful to create word problems using students’ names and drawing on everyday stories, news reports, or even culturally relevant legends.
•Support math writing. Students might be asked to create a double-entry journal, with the math problem on one side and the student’s step-by-step thinking process on the other. The native language can serve as a mediator between the math problem and the explanation of the thought process in English. Students might also be asked to post a tweet to explain a definition, or write a short story or journal entry using math vocabulary.
•Support speaking in a “free” language environment. Some EL students are quiet in whole-class math discussions because they need extra time to translate the content. Such students benefit from working on problems in small groups and being allowed to use their native language, use drawings, or work with the double-entry journal mentioned above.
“There are plenty of hard things about school for all kids,” says Arkansas teacher Justin Minkel in this Education Week Teacherarticle; “too many tests, too much sitting, too little recess. But for English learners, there is an added layer of difficulty; the constant effort to understand and make yourself understood can be exhausting.” Here’s what Minkel does to ease that burden for his 25 first and second graders, all of whom speak either Spanish or Marshallese at home:
•Warm them up. Minkel has students sit in a circle and pass around an invisible ball without talking, imagining that it keeps changing in size and weight, from a marble to a weighty boulder. He also reads books aloud, has students choral-read a familiar book, and has them turn and talk about what they like to do after school or describe their favorite place to read at home.
•Get them laughing. Anyone trying to speak an unfamiliar language has an “affective filter” of self-consciousness, embarrassment, and fear of looking foolish, says Minkel, and that can “stifle our thoughts and trip up our tongues.” Humor can help – singing silly songs, reading hilarious books aloud (the Elephant and Piggieseries by Mo Willems or the chapter on whizzpoppers from Roald Dahl’s The B.F.G.). “Don’t be afraid to be ridiculous,” he says.
•Get most of the talking happening in small groups or with partners. “It’s a good teaching practice, with all students but especially English learners, to do less ‘teacher talk’ and more conversation and group work,” says Minkel. “The kids, not the teacher, are the ones who need practice speaking English.” Before having students speak in front of the whole class, he suggests having them discuss the topic with their “elbow partners” to practice the language they’ll use if they’re called on. That way they’ll speak more, learn more, and be less self-conscious.
•Don’t let your frustration show. “There is no faster way to make a child clam up than to express anger and frustration,” he says. “Take a deep breath, slow down, and show your students the same grace you would want if you were taking an algebra class in Russian.”
•Realize that more is going on in their minds than they can express. “One of the hardest parts about struggling with a foreign language is that you don’t have the words to express your thoughts,” says Minkel. He imagines himself at a dinner party where everyone is speaking fluent French and what he thinks is a sophisticated thought comes out, “Me like books when they is good and not bad.” It’s okay for students to speak their native language every once in a while, especially with a small group of classmates about math or science, providing a bridge for difficult concepts. And it’s okay for the teacher to speak with students in their first language – especially if the kids are more proficient than the adult – “a wonderful role reversal.”
In this article in School Library Journal, Drew Himmelstein says that when his son enters his first-grade classroom in a public school in Brooklyn, New York, the boy points to one of several options on a brightly colored sign for how he wants to say hello to his teacher:
Books about consent
“After #MeToo, Teaching Consent” by Drew Himmelstein and Liz Kleinrock in School Library Journal, Winter 2018 (Vol. 64, #13, p. 20-23), no e-link
“The Link Between August Birthdays and A.D.H.D.” by Anupam Jena, Michael Barnett, and Timothy Layton in The New York Times, November 30, 2018, https://nyti.ms/2QJZ8C2
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About the Marshall Memo
Mission and focus:
This weekly memo is designed to keep principals, teachers, superintendents, and other educators very well-informed on current research and effective practices in K-12 education. Kim Marshall, drawing on 48 years’ experience as a teacher, principal, central office administrator, writer, and consultant lightens the load of busy educators by serving as their “designated reader.”
To produce the Marshall Memo, Kim subscribes to 60 carefully-chosen publications (see list to the right), sifts through more than a hundred articles each week, and selects 5-10 that have the greatest potential to improve teaching, leadership, and learning. He then writes a brief summary of each article, pulls out several striking quotes, provides e-links to full articles when available, and e-mails the Memo to subscribers every Monday evening (with occasional breaks; there are 50 issues a year). Every week there’s a podcast and HTML version as well.
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Website:
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• Publications (with a count of articles from each)
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Core list of publications covered
Those read this week are underlined.
All Things PLC
American Educational Research Journal
American Educator
American Journal of Education
AMLE Magazine
ASCA School Counselor
District Management Journal
Ed. Magazine
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis
Educational Horizons
Educational Leadership
Elementary School Journal
English Journal
Essential Teacher
Exceptional Children
Go Teach
Harvard Business Review
Harvard Educational Review
Independent School
Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy
Journal of Education for Students Placed At Risk (JESPAR)
Kappa Delta Pi Record
Knowledge Quest
Language Arts
Literacy Today (formerly Reading Today)
Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School
Middle School Journal
Peabody Journal of Education
Phi Delta Kappan
Principal
Principal Leadership
Reading Research Quarterly
Responsive Classroom Newsletter
Rethinking Schools
Review of Educational Research
School Administrator
School Library Journal
Social Education
Social Studies and the Young Learner
Teaching Children Mathematics
Teaching Exceptional Children
The Atlantic
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Journal of the Learning Sciences
The Language Educator
The Learning Professional (formerly Journal of Staff Development)
The Reading Teacher
Theory Into Practice
Time Magazine