GVSU Learning Network
Supporting Student Learning Needs
January 21 & 22, 2015
Today’s Objectives
• To share results of learning styles discussions within
your schools.
• To identify shifts of instruction necessary to bring these
ideas alive in your schools.
• To better understand certain socio-emotional needs and
how more responsive classrooms can address these
needs.
• Experience and reflect upon American Grit
• To identify any next steps in the your school’s efforts to
better meet the needs of your students.
Agenda
Time
Task/Topic
9:00-9:15
Community Announcements, Agenda, Norms
9:15-10:30
Identifying and Guiding Instructional Shifts
• Reflecting on action since last meeting
• Video observation
• Shifting instructional practice
10:30-10:45
Break
10:45-12:00
Socio-Emotional Needs (Noncognitive)
• A few key needs
• Responsive classroom
12:00-12:45
Lunch
12:45-1:30
Team workshop
1:30-1:45
Break
1:45-3:00
American Grit
• Performance
Learning Network -Norms
• Silence mobile phones
and other devices
• Be present and engaged
• Listen actively
• Make this relevant to your
work and your school
• Call the baby ugly (call it
like you see it)—try to not
be defensive; take care
with people, also.
• Reduce side
conversations
• Come prepared
• Speak honestly
• Vegas rule—share ideas,
but protect people,
schools, sensitive issues
• Share speaking
opportunities—watch talk
time
• Avoid negativity and
complaining
• Arrive on time, start on
time, end on time
How Will You Share This
Information With Your Faculty?
Taking Stock: What Did We
Do? What Did We Learn?
Classrooms: What do you see?
• Describe what you see?
– Be descriptive? Avoid judgments and
evaluation.
– Be specific? Avoid vagaries and generalities.
Learning and Teaching in the Classroom
Teacher
Task
Student
Content
The Status Quo
• Teachers doing preponderance of intellectual
work
• Students are not challenged intellectually by the
work in front of them.
• Students learning discrete facts and skills with
little opportunity to draw connections and apply
knowledge.
• Students passive and compliant . . . to a fault.
• Classroom cultures, even when exceptionally
organized and structured, do not foster
intellectual accountability or academic press.
Key Instructional Shifts
• Getting students to do the intellectual work of classrooms.
• Getting students engaged in more rigorous reasoning
through powerful and intentional academic tasks.
• Getting students engaged in more complex and real-world
problem solving.
• Getting students to self regulate their current learning and
improvement toward explicit and well-defined learning
outcomes.
• Getting classrooms to accomplish the above by fostering
strong normative and nurturing learning cultures.
Intellectual Heavy Lifting
All too often it is the teachers breaking the sweat, making the
connections, drawing the inferences, answering their own questions,
and solving the problems. That is hard work. Yet the harder working
is designing the classroom such that this is the work of students.
Rigorous Tasks
For over a decade dozens
of thought leaders have
called for more rigorous
classrooms. At the end of
the day, rigor shows up in
the tasks that teachers are
designing for students and
whether students are deeply
engaged in those tasks. If
rigor cannot be seen there,
it isn’t there.
Complex, Real-World
Problem Solving
Classrooms must prepare
students for when they are
outside the schoolhouse,
where one’s mind and
knowledge obtained are
only as useful as they are
used. We must help
students apply knowledge in
practical and relevant ways.
Self-Regulation
Students learn more effectively when they are
driving the learning process. When students
have learning goals, monitor their own progress
toward those goals, experiment with strategies
and track the results of those strategies, they
are more likely to be successful.
Intellectual Accountability
That is an interesting position, Roberto. First of all, it is hard to fully understand
your thinking because you did not explain why. So, I’ll focus more on my
argument. I disagree with your position because the narrator provides multiple
glimpses into what she is thinking about herself. We see this in the second and
third chapters, when the narrator shifts from talking about the protagonist to
revealing how she feels about herself.
Lisa, 4th grade
Effective classrooms promote intellectual work.
Expectations are high, and systems and structures are put
into place to help students reach those expectations.
These are cultures of effort, grit and perseverance. These
are also cultures where if you get lazy, it gets
uncomfortable.
Discussion
• Select one of these instructional shifts,
and identify specific pedagogical moves
teachers could make to leverage learning
styles to one of these ends.
Noncognitive Skills
1. Academic Behaviors
Academic Behaviors
Going to Class
Doing Homework
Organizing Materials
Participating, Studying
Academic Performance
Source: Farrington, C. (2012): Teaching Adolescents to be Learners. UChicago CCSR.
2. Academic Perseverance
Academic Perseverance
Grit, Tenacity
Delayed Gratification
Self-Discipline
Self-Control
Academic Behaviors
Academic Performance
Source: Farrington, C. (2012): Teaching Adolescents to be Learners. UChicago CCSR.
3. Academic Mindsets
Academic Mindsets
I belong in this academic community.
My ability and competence grow with my effort.
I can succeed at this.
This work has value for me.
Academic Perseverance
Academic Behaviors
Academic Performance
Source: Farrington, C. (2012): Teaching Adolescents to be Learners. UChicago CCSR.
4. Learning Strategies
Academic Perseverance
Academic Behaviors
Academic Performance
Source: Farrington, C. (2012): Teaching Adolescents to be Learners. UChicago CCSR.
Learning Strategies
Study Skills
Metacognitive Strategies
Self-Regulated Learning
Goal-Setting
5. Social Skills
Social Skills
Interpersonal Skills, Empathy,
Cooperation, Assertion, and
Responsibility
Source: Farrington, C. (2012): Teaching Adolescents to be Learners. UChicago CCSR.
Academic Behaviors
Academic Performance
Full Model
Source: Farrington, C. (2012): Teaching Adolescents to be Learners. UChicago CCSR.
Responsive Classroom:
Text-Based Discussion
• Roles: Facilitator, Theme-Capturer
• What are the most important ideas from
this article? What are the implications of
these ideas for your classrooms and
schools?
• What ideas from the article could be
applied to help realize the instructional
shifts discussed earlier? What would this
look like in a classroom?