Excellence from the Middle Out: Frederick County Public Schools

Four Fundamentals of Middle Level Teaching (Part 1 & 2)

by Rick Wormeli on MiddleWeb

The music starts with a low base beat, then it moves up the scale, adding more texture as it builds intensity. Our pulse quickens, adrenalin flows, and finally our classroom world crescendos and we are at full throttle, teaching like we’ve never taught before, affecting the future in ways we never dreamed we could. It’s a fantastic time to be a middle level educator!

It really is. With the transformative work of the Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE), the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform and their Schools to Watch program, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the Southern Regional Education Board (MMGW), plus new insights and support from myriad researchers and expert practitioners, we have more information on how to teach young adolescents effectively than we’ve ever had before.

When applied effectively in our daily classroom practice, it all works as promised. Best of all, politicians, business leaders, and those outside of middle level teaching are finally recognizing the critical role the middle years play in everyone’s future success, and they are supporting us.

In the midst of all this forward momentum, however, it’s important to float above the treetops and look at the larger landscape, to see what kind of job our colleagues across the profession are doing as middle grades educators. What’s my outlook?

We could be doing better

In my capacity as a teacher trainer, I get to see the big picture of teaching and learning in the middle grades, traveling all over North America and abroad, observing a wide variety of middle level teachers and principals at work. While most are doing well, some are not. In almost all situations in which schools and teachers could do better, one or more of what I consider four fundamentals of middle level teaching are in their nascent stages — or missing completely. Whatever we can do to help educators develop all four of these fundamentals is time well spent.

Fundamental #1: We must apply what we know about our unique students

Here’s a potentially insightful activity: let’s take out our lesson plans and circle those places where our expertise around the nature of 10 to 15 year-olds is clearly demonstrated. Do we end up with lots of circles? This is not a group of slightly more complex primary students. Nor is it a group of immature high schoolers. These kids are unique. We can’t, for example, just assign a lengthier version of expository writing than students were asked to do in the early elementary grades and think we’re being developmentally appropriate for middle level students.

ucentralarkansas

When I ask middle level teachers to show me how their lessons respond to the unique nature of young adolescent students, sometimes I get a blank stare. That scares the heck out of me. I begin to think these folks are teaching blind to the students they serve, and that can’t be good. There is a way to teach high school seniors that doesn’t work with middle school students — just as we can’t take what we know about 12 year-olds and think it works the same way with 17 or 18-year old teens. It all comes down to what we know about human growth and development.

So what is it about young adolescents that we should take into consideration when designing and implementing our lessons? Here’s a small taste: They can’t all be lumped into the same readiness levels – emotionally, intellectually, hormonally, or physically. Girls mature faster than boys. Bones grow faster than muscles, so coordination isn’t consistent. There is discomfort in the growth plates on the ends of their bones that requires frequent movement to relieve, even in mid-lesson. With growth comes the need to eat – about every 90 minutes. They worry intensely over body changes, and they have an increased need for hydration. In her book Brain Matters (2010), Pat Wolfe reminds us that they have an increased tendency toward addictive behaviors and pleasure seeking. Intellectually, the tools they’ll need for figuring out academics and life are not all in the toolbox yet. This makes decision-making, impulsivity control, moral/abstract reasoning, “reading” the situation, planning, understanding consequences of words and actions, and other executive functions intermittent at best.

They are fiercely independent, yet paradoxically; they crave social connection. This is the first point in their lives that they realize how wrong adults can be, and they’re not sure what to make of it. They move from concrete to abstract thinking, sounding like adults when talking about some topics, and young children when discussing others.

They crave competence, self-definition, creativity, vividness in learning, emotionally safe environments, control/power over their lives, physical activity, positive social interactions with adults and peers, structure and clear limits, and meaningful participation in school/community. Most of all, they want to belong. Middle level teachers should be able to cite these attributes and many others without hesitation, and their lessons should reflect this expertise. Where in our lessons have we provided concept vividness? Where have we helped students move from concrete to abstract? Where have we given students some decision-making power in their learning?

Great resources for getting up to speed on what is currently known about young adolescents include several excellent AMLE publications: Middle School Journal, Middle Ground, and Research in Middle Level Education Online. I also recommend An International Look at Educating Young Adolescents (Mertens, Anfara, Jr., Roney), Turning Points 2000, This We Believe (AMLE), and the pioneering work of Chris Stevenson, who wrote Teaching 10 to 14 Year-olds.

Fundamental #2: To become proficient, we have to fail a lot

In his book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell offers compelling, researched arguments that we need about 10,000 hours in a skill or field before we are considered proficient in it. In our profession, the 10,000 hours is reached about the sixth year – perhaps earlier, if we include teaching work done over the summer. But for me, it wasn’t until the eighth, ninth and tenth years that I gained confidence in my own proficiency (and there are moments, even today, that I still have some doubts).

Gaining proficiency requires us to spend a fair amount of time failing. In every career considered a profession, the professional model works very well: We learn knowledge, we apply that knowledge in specific situations in our jobs, we get critiqued on how we’re doing, and we revise our knowledge and efforts in light of that critique. When we continue going through this cycle again and again, we mature in our field and are more effective as a result. It’s the stuff of teaching hospitals, professional development schools, architectural schools, CPA offices, police and fire department academies, law firms, journalism – every profession.

Effective middle grades teachers offer this same powerful cycle of learning to our students. And we do it with the understanding that we are guiding the intellectual development of insecure, morphing humans in transition. Ineffective middle grades teachers, on the other hand, rely on antiquated teaching algorithms like: Read Chapter 12; answer 1-23 on p. 317; take notes on two lectures; watch one 35-minute video; practice with flash cards; take the test on Friday. From this sequence, they expect students to absorb and retain information in long-term memory. While any one of these actions may help students learn something in the short term, none of them are the best recipe for long-term mastery, which is the school’s goal or certainly should be.

If we want our students to achieve mastery of standards with any kind of consistency, we have to revisit content and skills repeatedly throughout the year, and in different contexts and from different angles. Learning is recursive. We don’t dare assume students learn something because we said something, and we don’t declare students lazy when they fail to learn. Instead, we create constructive responses to failure.

Let’s think through this using some science content. When we teach the noble gases: helium (He), neon (Ne), argon (Ar), krypton (Kr), xenon (Xe), and radioactive radon (Rn), we list them and explain how they are odorless, colorless, and have very low chemical reactivity. We point out that each of their melting and boiling points are close together, so they are liquid only for a small temperature range. We tell students about their uses historically and in industry: deep-sea diving, space exploration, blimps, and lighting. We may include fun facts such as Helium being the second most common substance found in the universe, and its extremely low freezing point, about -457 degrees Fahrenheit.

But this procedure is simply knowledge conveyance. There’s nothing here about moving things into long-term memory through recursive practices, circling back over and over again with new approaches to the same content.

In my example, new units of study should incorporate this information about noble gases. We can require students to use this data in analyzing the effects of noble gases in new situations and inventions – ask them to draw comparisons between noble gases and characters in a novel – ask them to explain the Periodic Table’s taxonomy when discussing nomenclature and classification. We can also assign students to explain repeatedly, in a variety of formats, why a narrow temperature range between melting and boiling points matters, and which elements are found most commonly in the universe and which ones are most rare.

If we are effective “recursive educators,” we visit and re-visit the content/skills that provide the most leverage in our students’ education, assessing students each time, providing feedback, and engaging them in re-learning as necessary, however long and whatever method it takes. This means we allow students to re-do work and assessments over and over until they hit the high standard set for them, and we give them full credit for mastery when it is finally presented, not partial credit because they didn’t learn it on our prescribed timetable.

If we are effective, we build our previous curriculum targets into subsequent assessments to see what students carry forward, which is the true testimonial for a grade (our grade as well as theirs). If the evidence offered does not reflect the high level presented during the original unit, then the grade for that standard, for that student, goes down until clear and consistent evidence of higher mastery is presented.

If we are effective, we focus these extended efforts primarily on the non-negotiable “Power standards” we have to teach — and we have to focus on those because there is not enough time during the school year to give this much effort to all the standards listed in our curriculum. We incorporate our colleagues’ course content in our own classes, and they use our course content in their classes, so that we all reinforce each other’s important learning.

Fundamental 3: We Need a Heck of a Lot More Descriptive Feedback

Middle school students can learn without grades, but they can’t learn without feedback. Let’s make descriptive feedback, not just any feedback, a priority. “Good job!” is not descriptive, nor is “You can do better” written in the margins of a student’s paper. Try specific feedback like this instead:

       • I can’t find evidence for your claim. Can you help me find it?
       • Your speech had the required content, but your audience was not engaged. Looking at your 

         audience, avoiding a monotone voice, and personalizing your examples would have engaged 

         them.
      • You followed the directions of the lab, but you had an additional variable that negatively 

        affected your results. What was it, and how will you adjust your methods so the variable doesn’t 

        occur again? 

Having students do their own descriptive self-assessments is also a critical component of effective learning. When students complete tasks, we can ask them to write a letter to us comparing their own efforts with exemplars we provide. Where does their attempt match the model/exemplar? Where does it deviate?  We can ask them to do an item analysis of their test performance as well:  

        Which ones did you get correct? Which were incorrect, and why were they incorrect? 
        What actions will you take to learn the concept properly? 

We can place a special mark at the end of any sentence with a punctuation error — or near a mistake in the order of operations in a math problem — and that can signal the student to “find and correct the error.”

When teachers not only identify mistakes but provide the correct fact or procedure, they’re promoting passive student learning. It’s learning that does not last.

On the other hand, when teachers put up a flag, declaring the presence of errors, and give students whatever tools they may need to find and correct their mistakes, we instigate active learning that endures.

Let’s remember that it’s the descriptive nature and frequency of the feedback that really matter. It’s critically important, in fact, and it must be a purposeful focus in our lesson design, not just something we do when we “can get around to it.” In each lesson element, identify how students will receive feedback about their growing understanding. The feedback can come from themselves, peers, teachers, or others. If it’s frequent and descriptive, they will be able to use this feedback to revise their efforts and be assessed anew.

Fundamental #4: You Know a Heck of a Lot More Than Your Pacing Guide

The pacing guide for our subject says we should be on page 83 today, but students are not ready for that content or they mastered it long ago. So what do we do?

As highly trained professionals, we now go “off the map” and teach what is developmentally appropriate for our students right now — not what a curriculum committee sitting in a conference room over the summer presumed our classroom realities would be at this moment of the year. Yes, it’s helpful to have clear standards and a pacing guide’s schematic presentation of learning, but we do not treat it as prescriptive. We reserve the right to adjust things as necessary in order to live up to the school’s mission – teaching every student (including the kids who are most challenged) to higher levels than they thought they could achieve.

If we find a smarter, more effective way to teach something, we’re ethically bound as professional teachers to use it instead of trying to “honor” an ineffective pacing guide that didn’t foresee the unique situations before us. The alternative, student incompetence, is not acceptable. Put another way, we can never sacrifice our students in order to be able to say: “I am perfectly aligned with the pacing guide.”

If a particular book we all agree should be taught at this grade level is not the book that best fits a subset of our students, and we know another book in the same genre will work better, we should be allowed to use it. If we teach all the same standards through that more effective book, we should be permitted to use our judgment without suffering the death stare of the department chair. We must have an educational reason to make such changes, of course, not just a mood or whimsy.

Teachers sometimes forget that schools are not set up to teach. They are designed to protect the status quo, to conform to accountability requirements created by non-educators far above us in the food chain, and to best meet the needs of students who get it first. For any student who needs more, less, or different instruction, including the pacing and manner of instruction (and that’s most middle grades students on any given day), school conspires against them. In order to teach everyone, we need the professional fortitude to break with standardized practices as needed.

Mindless adherence to instructional pacing and technique regardless of the students we serve is middle grades malpractice. Seriously, would we want our own children in classes with such teachers? We have a professional obligation to invoke our intellect. We make informed responses to the needs of each student we serve.

To build and retain the trust necessary to be allowed such autonomy, we must demonstrate thoughtful decision-making based on up-to-date knowledge in our field, including both subject and pedagogical expertise. We need to be well read in our field and to participate in national conversations. Doctors, lawyers, and other professionals are as swamped with work as we are, but they read the latest journals and court cases weekly in order to keep up in their fields and provide the best service to patients and clients. As true professionals, we must do the same.

Are there other fundamentals for middle level teaching?

Yes, but the four I’ve described in these two MiddleWeb articles tend to be the ones most commonly missing when things aren’t going well. Shoring them up with sharply focused professional development for both teachers and principals will go a long way toward making middle school not only effective for students, but also vibrant places where we can happily dive back below the tree tops and play that teaching music with great passion and vitality.

Enjoy the years ahead!

Successful vs. Unsuccessful

Source Unknown

What to Do with My Middle Schooler this Summer?

I have already been asked the question…What should I do with my kids over the summer vacation? Many kids go to camp, or visit relatives, or enroll in special classes designed for children. But no matter if your kids are heavily scheduled, or if their time is completely their own, summertime is a perfect time for kids to experience boredom, forcing them to be creative. It’s a time to follow interests, discover new passions, and experiment. But even the most self-entertaining child sometimes runs out of ideas, so here are some items they can add to their summer checklist (Source: GeekDad.com). 

1. Explore outside. Being outside in nature is important for all children. Fresh air, exercise, and observation of the natural world are synonymous with childhood. The pathways around Columbia are perfect spots to explore.

 2. Make a pet rock. When they are out exploring in nature, kids can choose a rock. Something not too large, and with a smooth enough surface to take paint or sticky items. When they bring it back, once washed and dried it can be decorated with paint, glitter, sticky foam, googly eyes, or whatever is needed to make the rock into a new pet. And here’s the best part: It doesn’t require food or cleaning up after.

 3. Go stargazing. Summer is the perfect time to go stargazing. It isn’t too cold at night, and a family sitting on a blanket looking up at the night sky is an enjoyable way to learn together. Read up on a few constellations and planetary locations ahead of time, and your kids will think you’re a genius.

4. Study the weather. Set up a little weather station and measure rainfall, wind direction, and temperature. Chart these over time to see how the weather changes in your area. Compare notes with a cousin who lives in a different city.

5. Watch movies. Movies that your kids missed in the theater but are out on DVD still make for an exciting way to spend a lazy afternoon when it’s too hot to play outside. Popcorn and lemonade make good accompaniments.

6. Catch up on geek classics. This is a fantastic opportunity to indoctrinate your kids in the all-important geeky movies, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Princess Bride, Back to the Future, WarGames, Tron, and others. And for older kids, set them on Monty Python, The Matrix, Akira, and Highlander.

7. Read books. That says it all.

8. Visit the library. Most local libraries have summer reading programs, special craft project times, puppet shows, teen clubs, and other fun things organized specially for the summer. Check the schedule at a library near you.

9. Build with Legos. Kids can build free-form projects, or modern art pieces. If they run out of ideas, challenge them to build a spaceship, a plant, or a robot. See who can assemble the most realistic Dalek. But no instruction is really necessary here. We’ve all been building with Lego since we could hold up a 2×4 brick. Give them a tub of Lego and let them go.

10. Experiment with cooking. Even very young children can try their hand at cooking or baking. They can help to measure ingredients, stir, and arrange the final result. Older kids can cook on the stove, or use the oven. Contributing to the family meal is a very rewarding experience for kids of all ages. And the more that they learn how to do, the more they can help out on a regular basis.

11. Become an expert on a period in history. Regency England, Ancient Egypt, modern day Lapland… It is all within their reach. Have them choose books at the library, or search for interesting websites. Then have them teach you all about what they have learned.

12. Play in the dirt and/or plant a vegetable garden. Sure, it’s messy, but there is research that says it is good for you. And there’s something about digging and piling and making trenches that is just fun. Plus it’s one of the five best toys of all time, so you can’t go wrong there.

13. Make forts. No matter your age, making and playing in forts made out of pillows, blankets, and couch cushions is a load of fun. Bonus challenge: Make the fort large enough for grown-ups!

14. Rediscover old toys. If your kids are anything like mine, many of their toys get forgotten, or perpetually hidden behind other toys. Summertime affords plenty of time for kids to go through their rooms and rediscover some of the toys that haven’t been played with for some time. Perhaps they’ve outgrown some of them, and can donate them or pass them on to others.

15. Play with science. Roll cars down an incline. Mix vinegar and baking soda. Examine ants on the sidewalk. Compare rocks. A lot of the usual childhood activities are just science. Have fun with it!

16. Play board games. Of course, this activity is good for any time of year. But if you have more than one child, or a child with nearby friends, encouraging them to play board games together always bears fruit. Kids often come up with their own set of house rules for old favorites, and often have more patience with each other for repeated rounds of the same game, over and over. And any time that parents have to join in, all the better.

17. Watch the Summer Olympics. This year the summer Olympics will be held in London, England from July 27 to August 12. No matter their leanings, there is likely a sport or two that will interest your kids. In addition to watching and learning, kids can mark the winners on a world map, or keep track of the medal count.

These activities are great for kids alone, kids together, or whole families. Once you have decided which activities works best for you and your child, document the experience with pictures and video, and have them share their experience and what they learned with a relative in another state. Have them use their tech abilities to create a movie or slide show online.

I hope everyone has a rewarding summer, and hopefully, your kids will quickly develop a daily mantra of,  

“What can I learn or discover today?”

Grammar Made Easy

Math Relevance to U.S. Middle Schoolers

Happy Moo Year!

Oops...Happy New Year!

As I shared with my staff,  

There's just no substitute for the real thing! 

Please stay healthy and avoid missing work as we prepare our students 

to take the Maryland School Assessments this year.

We need some STEAM!

As states and local school districts "race" to reorganize to address the latest reform efforts outlined in the Race to the Top legislation, it is critical that we maintain the opportunity for all students to discover the arts, develop individual talents and gain an appreciation for the talents of others each and every year they are in school.

Thus, STEAM! What is STEAM?

STEAM = Science & Technology interpreted through 

Engineering & the Arts, all based in Mathematical elements. 

(Georgette Yakman) 

This framework is engaging, hands-on and reality-based with many extensions to draw education, industry, government and the community together for the common good of bettering public education for all while meeting national educational and STEM related goals.

   

As President Obama reminded us in last year's State of the Union Address,

“We need to teach our kids that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to 

be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair.” 

I would like to add to his powerful statement...we also need to celebrate those students who show promise in the areas of music, art, physical fitness, creativity and innovation. After all, we want our students to be energized and motivated to pursue careers that will advance our society, while at the same time, developing healthy and creative pursuits that provide pleasure, happiness and satisfaction for a lifetime of learning.

STEAM helps to focus educators on the importance of developing in each child the imaginative, creative and critical thinking skills essential for a lifetime of learning and growing as students mature. We can't just teach short-term, basic skills that don't promote problem-solving and the process for creating original ideas and/or products.

After all, Sam Parker highlights in his 212 Degrees...The Extra Degree that:

"At 211 degrees, water is hot. At 212 degrees, it boils. And with boiling water, comes STEAM. 

And with STEAM, you can power a train." 

Just imagine what STEAM could do for our students!

Amazing Art Work at the Lake!

 

What amazing artists we have here at WLMS! 

A special thanks to Ms. Simpson for being such a great teacher and inspiring such wonderful artistic expressions from our students!

5th Annual YES Conference is a HUGE Success!

This past Thursday, over 250 middle school student leaders from 14 Howard County schools came together to hone their leadership skills and begin to imagine how they can improve their schools and communities. Five years ago, we began the Youth Empowerment Summit with only 4 schools and less than 100 students who participated. I am so happy to see how this program has expanded even though the funding for the program has been severely cut.

At this year's YES, I had the privilege of helping to warm-up the students by doing a group energizer called the Boom-Bang Orchestra and introducing Howard County Executive Ken Ulman. In fact, Mr. Ulman helped to conduct the Boom-Bang Orchestra. He is such a good sport and he gave a very good speech helping to set the tone for the day.


I want to thank my wife for helping to start the first summit and Kelli Brandt for inviting me to participate again this year. After talking to several of my WLMS students who attended, the day was a huge success and they are motivated to help improve our school in the coming months.

As you know, providing middle school students with the skills necessary to identify and solve real-life problems is a very important task. It helps to focus their abundant energy in a positive direction. In addition, leadership skills are useful life skills that can be adapted to most situations our students will face in the future.

New tools to monitor bullying, predators on Facebook

By John-John Williams IV

The Baltimore Sun's Inside Ed Blog

With the news of bullying still fresh on the minds of Marylanders, I thought I might pass along this article to you about new computer programs that help parents monitor bullies and predators on Facebook.

The programs GoGoStat Parental Guidance and Social Shield, are free Facebook apps that allow parents to monitor and set rules for their childrens' use of certain features of Facebook.

Parents can use the program to send alerts about abusive postings and potentially inappropriate contacts originating from a certain geographic range or from potentially questionable online acquaintances.

Here are a couple more: www.youdiligence.com and safetyweb.

Have any of you tried out these programs? Do you have any other programs to recommend?

Advice from some baseball players

As the baseball season begins to get interesting, or at least so I hear (Since I am both an Oriole and Nationals fan, I can only dream about next year). I thought I would share some great quotes from some famous ball players that can be applied to the upcoming school year.

A life
is not
important
except in
the impact
it has
on other lives.

Jackie Robinson (1919-1972)
Hall of Fame baseball player

“Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday's success or put its failures behind and start over again.
That's the way life is, with a new game every day, and that's the way baseball is.”

Bob Feller
Hall of Fame pitcher

Hitting is timing.

Pitching is upsetting
timing.

Warren Spahn (1921-2003)

Hall of Fame pitcher

Never
let the fear
of striking out
get
in your way.

Babe Ruth (1895-1948)
world’s greatest baseball player

Secretary Duncan Outlines President Obama's Education Reform Plan

In order for state's to receive a portion of the $39.5 billion being allocated from the federal government, they must:

1) Increase teacher effectiveness and address inequities in the distribution of highly qualified teachers;
2) Establish and use pre-K-through-college and career data systems to track progress and foster continuous improvement;
3) Make progress toward rigorous college- and career-ready standards and high-quality assessments;
4) Support targeted, intensive support and effective interventions to turn around schools identified for corrective action and restructuring.

To read more about this plan, click here:

http://p8.hostingprod.com/@www.principalspolicyblog.org/blog/2009/05/education_secretary_outlines_o.html

Quote of the Day!

Pain is temporary.

It may last

a minute,

or an hour,

or a day,

or a year,

but eventually

it will subside

and something else

will take its place.

If I quit, however,

IT

LASTS

FOREVER.

Lance Armstrong

Paper Airplane...A lesson for flying OUTSIDE the Box!

Click here to see the short video.


Thanks Cindy!

A thought for the day...

Too many people
overvalue
what they are not
and
undervalue
what they are.

Malcolm Forbes (1919-1990)
publisher of Forbes magazine

Obama Wins!

www.getreligion.org

This past week, our students participated in a National Mock Election in order to learn more about the election process and the policy making decisions made by the Federal Government. According to our student voting results, Senator Obama won the Presidential race, along with Frank Kratovil, Dutch Ruppersberger and Paul Sarbanes in each of their respective Congressional races here in Maryland. In addition, our students identified the economy as the issue that is most important to them.

If you haven’t done so already, I hope all parents will talk to their children about this year’s election and share their values and beliefs concerning the very important national issues facing our country. Our students here at ELMS are very engaged and interested in what their parents think! Don't lose this great chance to talk to your middle schooler about something that is of mutual interest.

Also, I hope each of you will vote on November 4th. In addition to the Presidential race that will be decided here in Maryland, there are local school board seats up for election and the choice to legalize slots or not.

Don't forget...Your vote matters and your children are watching
whether you participate or not!