This is the third post in a series on how I approach the work of teaching. If you missed the first or second post, check it out here.
Aside from experimenting with how to motivate students day to day, I also try to experiment a lot more with my lesson plans now. Experimenting with lesson plans in the past consisted mostly of revising, deleting, or adding to the questions in the network-provided plans (see planning notes #1), revising the exemplary student responses, or changing the order of questions in the sequence. Looking back, I’d characterize this type of work as “editing” rather than “experimenting” because the purpose of my deviating from the plan was for increased clarity, rather than trying out a truly different pedagogical technique. The role of the questioning sequence, with or without my revisions, remained the same — to actively prime students to reach a specific realization. It didn’t provide much space for organic curiosity, multiple entry points into the task, exploration, or discovery. In the education world, this is called “funneled questioning.” The questions follow a prescribed order, and they are leading. It is one level more rigorous than didactically walking students through a problem step-by-step because students are at least required to answer each of the questions along the way instead of being given the steps outright by the teacher. In other words, it’s slightly better than a traditional I Do/We Do/You Do*, but not by much.
I learned about a few promising and research-based alternatives to this lesson structure while taking classes as part of my master’s program for teaching at Relay Graduate School of Education, but it wasn’t until pandemic teaching that I found more interest in actually implementing them. One thing about the pandemic that I greatly appreciate is that it forced me to question a lot of my learned habits, both in teaching and in life.
For example, one structure I learned about at Relay was called the modeling cycle. In a modeling cycle, the teacher introduces a task to students, generally one with real-world context that students can apply a variety of different strategies to solve, ranging from concrete to more abstract strategies. One of the teacher’s main roles at the beginning is to generate interest in the task so that students are more likely to engage. Students might start by asking questions about the task or working for a few minutes trying to solve independently. After that, students work in partners or groups and attempt to fully solve the problem. During work time, the teacher might choose a student(s) to present to the class for a critical step in the problem if the majority of the class gets stuck. After any mid-point presentations, students continue to work until most of the class has figured out the problem. The teacher might then ask other students to present their work, choosing to showcase a variety of strategies and deciding on an order (sequence) of work most conducive to building student understanding on the new topic. The whole class comes together to discuss the strategies, any patterns they notice, and most importantly, connections between the strategies. At the end of the modeling cycle, students align on a key point that they can apply further as they begin to practice the new skill in earnest. Students also typically have an opportunity to reflect on the trajectory of their thinking and how the new skill or idea will be useful in the future.
The interesting thing about the modeling cycle and other student-centered learning techniques when executed effectively is that, at the surface, it appears the teacher is doing very little. Behind the scenes however, the teacher has anticipated all the strategies students are likely to use, including any misconceptions and how they will be addressed. The teacher plans how they might decide on the sequence of work based on what students actually produce in the moment, and how to introduce any strategies that students did not show. Teachers are like ducks — calm, relaxed, and composed on the surface but working furiously underneath to paddle around the lake. Planning for a modeling cycle ends up being a lot more work compared to planning for funneled questioning or I Do/You Do/We Do. What a lot of adults might find surprising is that all of the learning happens through a single task. Rather than drilling and killing, students learn to deeply engage with one problem in a way that research shows** fosters retention and application.
I started practicing planning for and implementing the modeling cycle in earnest last summer. I had signed on to teach 8th grade math for summer school, remote edition, as part of the National Summer School Initiative (NSSI). NSSI was a new organization borne from the need to address COVID learning loss coupled with summer slide***. The math curriculum that NSSI provided relied on an idea called “story problems,” where students attempt an in-context problem without any scaffolding or guidance from the teacher. The teacher looks at the collection of student work and selects a few key pieces of work to highlight for class discussion. Essentially, teachers implemented a variation of the modeling cycle adapted to work in the remote world. Instead of using class time to complete the problem, students arrive to class ready to discuss the problem they completed the previous day. The discussion is grounded in student work and is structured to elicit connections among strategies and deepen understanding. The primary difference of the NSSI structure and curriculum and regular class during the school year is that the NSSI problems were presented in no particular order with respect to curriculum and required students to draw on what they learned throughout the school year. This served the purpose of having students review information they already learned compared to learning new concepts, which is an important goal of summer school.
Twenty-five days of summer school shaped my teaching in ways I could never have predicted. I was sold on the new approach I had learned and practiced. The experience kicked open the door to new ways of experimenting with lesson planning that I hadn’t conceived before.
*In a traditional I Do/We Do/You Do, first the teacher fully models how to solve a problem or complete a task, then the teacher guides the class through a similar task all together, and finally the students are released to complete a series of similar tasks in partners or independently. This is likely how most adults now learned math in school.
**If you are someone who is thinking, “Show me the evidence!” my answer is: good for you, but I don’t have the time to dig that up right now.
***If you’re unfamiliar, summer slide is a well-tracked phenomenon where students lose a portion of their learning from the school year due to prolonged time away from the classroom. Because COVID significantly disrupted learning in the spring of 2020, researchers, teachers, and education leaders wanted to create something that would diminish the slide.
