The Value of Relationships

You were one of my favorite teachers! You made an impact on my life. I remember you treating me and some of the girls like real people and talking to us and respecting us. It's something I always try to do now that I'm a teacher and part of that is because of the memories I have of my year with you. 

So thank you!

Wow! That is what being a teacher is all about.

I received a Facebook friend request from a former student of mine, and upon minutes of accepting the request, she posted the above quote on my timeline. This student, who I had as an 8^th grader and who is now a teacher herself, took the time, some 15 years later, to let me know the impact I had on her. I remember this student and her friends fondly, and it warmed my heart to hear from her. Since then, I’ve been able to “see” her and her family (including her brother, who was also my student) on Facebook and see how they’ve grown up.

What struck me as especially notable in her post is what she remembered about her year in my classroom. She didn’t mention the novels we read, the papers she wrote, or the projects she completed. It wasn’t the homework or the tests I assigned that made an impact on her life. It was how I treated her and her friends that made a difference to her. It was how I respected them that she remembers and emulates today with her own students.  

Noted educator Rita Pierson, in her TedTalk “Every kid needs a champion,” discussed the power of relationships, referring to James Comer, who said that “no significant learning can occur without a significant relationship” and George Washington Carver, who said that “all learning is understanding relationships.” She goes on to talk about how she worked to develop connections with all of her students, to see them succeed against all odds.

Many of the teachers I remember most from my own experiences as a student were those who were passionate about their subjects, who went the extra mile to show they cared about us as real people, and who saw our successes as their successes. It wasn’t what they taught us as much as how they taught us that made the difference. 

In recent years, educators have felt the weight of high-stakes assessments, legislature, evaluations, negative public opinion, heightened expectations, waning resources, and much more. It is easy in all of this to lose sight of what drew many of us to education in the first place: a desire to work with children and make a positive impact in their lives. We must not forget this as we enter the classroom each day. We must do whatever it takes to make the connection, develop the relationship, and be the champion every child deserves.

Jennifer Caldwell

Executive Director

Standards Solution Holding, LLC

The Healthy Way to Prepare for PARCC: Using PARCC’s ELA Resources

Test taking can be a stressful experience for students. However, with the right preparation and resources, instructors can prepare students for PARCC so that they will be confident on test day. We believe that for a student to perform at his or her personal best, he or she must be familiar with the test content, comfortable with the test-taking environment, and equipped with test-taking strategies. Fortunately, PARCC provides the tools and resources that an instructor needs to address all three.

Content

One may think that being aligned with the test content is synonymous with being aligned with the Standards. But this is not the case. How can one test evaluate students’ acquisition of all of the Standards? PARCC assesses a good many of the Standards, but cannot address all of them. For instance, PARCC assesses three vocabulary concepts within the Reading Standards (context clues, denotation vs. connotation, and identifying the meaning of unknown words) but none of the Language Standards (Exception: Students are evaluated on grammar and mechanics in the writing tasks.)

Instructors can better understand how PARCC assesses any given ELA Standard by reviewing the PARCC Evidence Tables for Reading and Writing.

Paired Texts

One way that PARCC assesses the Standards is to utilize paired passages. Besides creating thematic units of study, using paired or companion texts is a relatively new concept in the study of English language arts. Instructors can hone their understanding of how and why one should use paired text by using PARCC’s Passage Selection Guidelines (Information about selecting paired or multiple texts begins on page 11). Below is a list of reasons (paraphrased from the PARCC guidelines) why PARCC uses paired passages.

1. Compare literary elements, such as theme.

2. Compare central ideas, topics, and/or events (including same event and point of view) in two or more informational texts.

3. Compare and/or analyze different versions of the same text (literature or informational texts).

4. Analyze how ideas are transformed from one text to another literary or informational text.

5. Integrate information for a purpose.

6. Compare text structures.

7. Analyze supplemental elements.

Text Complexity

Another way to align instructional practice with PARCC’s content is to ensure that the level of text complexity is similar to PARCC’s as well as the Standards'. For a more complete understanding of measuring text complexity instructors can review the Common Core’s Appendix A.

To measure text complexity, PARCC uses two worksheets:

Literary Text Analysis Worksheet

InformationalText Analysis Worksheet

If instructors are still unsure about how to use these worksheets they can refer to the Passage Selection Guidelines for more detail.

Environment

PARCC is novel in their test-taking design. PARCC (and most of the new online state tests) utilize something call a technology-enhanced item (TEI). According to PARCC’s glossary of terms, “TEIs are items administered on a computer and take advantage of the computer-based environment to present situations and capture responses in ways that are not possible on a paper-based test.” Students need practice with this format so that navigating these items becomes second nature.

Fortunately, PARCC provides practice tests that can be taken online or as paper-and-pencil tests.

This year, instructors can also use PARCC’s released samples from the Spring 2014-2015 testing, which is provided for grades three through eleven (released test items).

Strategies

There are many ways that instructors can help students to perform at their personal best on any standardized test. One of those strategies is to help students understand the test construct and to develop personal strategies in relationship to the test item requirements. An example of this is to teach students how to score the writing tasks for the NWTs, LATs and RSTs. When students learn how to score essays, theirs and others, they become acutely aware of what’s expected out of their own essays. (See Scoring Rubrics: grade 3, grades 4-5, grades 6-11 .)

PARCC also provides scored student samples with annotations of their scoring rationale. PARCC’s annotated released samples are for the Reading Comprehension and Written Expression portion of the rubric. Also, PARCC provides separate samples on each grade level for the Language and Conventions portion of the rubric.

Sample releases can be accessed on PARCC’s Partnership Resource Center.

Creating EBSRs and TECRs

Lastly, another strategy to assist students with PARCC is to replicate the structure of the test items in daily work. One way to do this is to use PARCC’s Evidence-Based Selected Responses (EBSRs) and Technology-Enhanced Constructed Responses (TECRs) with classroom literature.

Two PARCC resources can be used to assist with this process. One document is the scoring guide for PARCC’s EBSRs and TECRs. With this document instructors know how to score their student results.

And another more complex document is called the Item Guidelines for ELA/Literacy PARCC Summative Assessment. Within this document are specifications on how PARCC creates EBSR and TECR items.

Below are PARCC’s recommendations for creating these items.

EBSR and TECR Questions:

·         “Good text dependent questions will often linger over specific phrases and sentences to ensure careful comprehension of the text—they help students see something worthwhile that they would not have seen on a more cursory reading.

·         An effective set of text dependent questions delves systematically into a text to guide students in extracting the key meanings or ideas found there.

·         They typically begin by exploring specific words, details, and arguments and then move on to examine the impact of those specifics on the text as a whole.

·         Along the way they target academic vocabulary and specific sentence structures as critical focus points for gaining comprehension.”

EBSR and TECR Distractors:

·         “The primary purpose of a distractor is to provide evidence that a student is not able to meet the standard(s) assessed due to student misconceptions.

·         Distractors must be plausible responses to item stems.

·         Items should not use negative distractors (the exact opposite of the correct answer).

·         The written style of all distractors in an item should be similar to that of the correct response(s).

·         Answer responses (distractors) are not ordered alphabetically by first word or by short to long.

·         In Part B, when writing the distractors for evidences, all of the answer choices must be the same type of citation of evidence (e.g. all quotes or all paraphrases).

·         Particular care must be taken for Part B items, where students are asked to select evidence from the text such that distractor wording to achieve parallelism in style does not overly impose distractor wording.

·         All answer choices for Part B must be accurate/relevant/from the passage.”

Conclusion

At times educators speak about the ills of teaching to the test. PARCC, Smarter Balanced, and many of the state-created assessments are now a strong reflection of the Standards. We have to implement the Standards. But as pragmatic educators we should also consider how to assist our students with the specific experience, similar to the way we teach someone to play soccer and not just sports. PARCC has unique attributes. If we are to understand our student’s ability to implement the Standards on these high stakes tests, then we need to prepare them for this test in particular, and not tests in general.

Victoria Pagonis

Founder and President

Standards Solution Holding, LLC

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How to Maximize Your Classroom Space for Student Engagement

The new school year will be here before we know it! Teachers are heading back into school to ready their classrooms for the new crop of students who will be walking through their door. There are so many considerations when it comes to classroom arrangement: available furniture, class size, room size and shape, and more. Ultimately, however, teachers must consider how to arrange their rooms in order to maximize student engagement.

Student engagement can be defined in many ways, including attention, sustained connection to content, and interest. What does all this mean when it comes to classroom arrangement? Consider student work space, access to materials, and possible distractions in the room, in order to arrange your classroom in a manner that maximizes student engagement.

Questions to Consider:

1. Are the most important teaching spaces visible from each seat in the room? This may include an interactive white board, relevant anchor charts, or a classroom word wall. If a student has to turn 180 degrees in his chair in order to see these teaching spaces, the student might have trouble engaging. If students are placed in groups, consider placing groups at angles to the front of the room to ensure each student can see the most important teaching spaces. Don’t forget to consider other possible work spaces like small group tables or carpet space.
2. Is the teacher able to maintain proximity to each student without squeezing through narrow spaces or tripping over items on the floor? No matter what the arrangement in the room, the students who are farthest from the teacher or out of the direct sight line of the teacher are the ones who are least likely to be engaged. This means that the teacher must be on the move in the classroom, so that students are kept on their toes. Each desk or table space must be accessible. Consider desk chair pockets to move students’ items off the floor, and consider arranging desks in a way that you create an inner circle to walk around.
3. Which desks are likely to provide the most distractions? There are so many possible distractions in a classroom: a seat that is closest to the hallway (and the noise and visuals that accompany it), or provides an outside view of the playground, or is closest to a printer used by multiple classrooms. There is no way to eliminate these distractions, but it is important to identify these spaces and be mindful of placing students who won’t be easily distracted in these seats.
4. Is my seating flexible? Sometimes you want students to work independently, sometimes in pairs, sometimes in different size groups. Do you have the ability to move your seating area to accommodate these different work conditions? If you have tables or pods, the answer the probably no. In that case, privacy dividers or alternate working space in the room may be desired. If you have desks, it is easier to rearrange the room depending on the needs of the lesson or activity.
5. Are students able to access materials easily and independently? Nothing creates a bigger distraction in the room than students who don’t have what they need to complete a lesson or activity. Whether students are moving throughout the room to get art supplies, paper, a folder, or reading material, an organized, easily accessible space will minimize distractions. Ideally, all these materials should be in the same space in the room, and there should be a practiced procedure in place for accessing them.

By carefully considering the impact classroom arrangement can have on student engagement, teachers can begin the year with a classroom that is set up for success. Then the focus can be on what’s most important: lessons and experiences that continue to engage students in the rigorous work of the classroom.