3 Reasons why Alberta's Provincial Achievement Tests are inappropriate

Today I have to administer a standardized test for the Alberta government. (Here's how I live with myself)

In Alberta, we have Provincial Achievement Tests and I have to administer Part A for Language Arts. My students are required to write a news article and a story in 2 hours.

Here are 3 reasons why this test is not an appropriate use of our limited time, effort and resources.

1. Collaboration should not be Cheating. My students read and write almost every single class. My students sit at tables with their laptops, devices and peers so that they can accelerate and enrich their learning by collaborating. While students are encouraged to work together during our 50 minute classes, we routinely have 15 minutes of silent reading and writing; however, I would never ask students to complete anything that is worth doing in complete isolation from their peers, parents, books or the Internet. I've worked hard to encourage my students to see collaboration as a critical characteristic of learning.

Alfie Kohn reminds us that, "I want to see what you can do not what your neighbour can do" is really just code for "I want to see what you can do artificially deprived of the skills and help of the people around you. Rather than seeing how much more you can accomplish in a well functioning team that's more authentic like real life."

In the real world, there simply aren't that many times you are expected to solve a problem or perform a task in complete isolation - and even if you were, it would be awfully archaic to refuse you the opportunity to reach out for the help you needed to get the task done.

2. Writing should not be canned or rushed. It's true that a written response standardized test is better than multiple choice but that isn't saying much. In my class, we read and write every single class -- we blog a lot. The few blog posts that we actually start and finish on the same day are some of the most shallow and superficial writing my students produce. My students' best writing involves a process that takes days and sometimes weeks. This year, we have written many current event blog posts and news articles where the students play an active role in researching primary and secondary sources to discover the who, what, where, when, why and how for real events.

In sharp contrast, this test shutters up the real world and reduces authentic student research to reading a pre-packaged point-form list of fiction-filled "facts" that merely demands students regurgitate point-form into sentences. This is writing's equivalent to paint-by-numbers.

3. There is no substitute for what teachers and parents observe while children are learning. Through out the year, I tell parents not to bother wasting their time looking at their child's marks on Pearson's PowerSchool. If anyone wants to know the extent to which my students are learning, you can look at their blog which features a wide-range of writing assignments that occur over a 10 month period.

In my classroom, testsandgrades are replaced with projects and performances collected in portfolios.

I routinely remind myself of a powerful classroom teacher's testimony:

In the real world of learning, tests, and reports and worksheets aren't the most meaningful way to understand a person's growth, they're just convenient ways in a system of schooling that's based on mass production... I assess my students by looking at their work, by talking with them, by making informal observations along the way. I don't need any means of appraisal outside my own observations and the student's work, which is demonstration enough of thinking, their growth, their knowledge, and their attitudes over time.

Teaching would be easier if it wasn't for the students

Here's what happened the other day.

My grade 8 students were exiting our classroom from social studies, as my grade 6 students began to enter.

I was getting myself focused on teaching a lesson on sentence writing, with an emphasis on using commas. I was thinking about how I could teach my students to write with a variety of sentence lengths so that their writing might flow for the reader.

I was trying to figure out how I was going to teach them how to use independent and dependent clauses to make short, medium and long sentences without boring them to death by talking about independent and dependent clauses.

I was proud that I had completely abstained from using the school's photocopier until the third week of school for a one-page handout on sentence writing.

But before half the class could even arrive, Kevin and Thomas were engaged in yet another one of their daily disagreements. Despite the obvious that they want to be friends, and that they need each other to get through the day, Kevin and Thomas's lagging social skills continue to set each other at odds.

Kevin was pissed right off and wouldn't even come in the classroom. He was going home.

Thomas came in but he was both denying and avoiding Kevin's accusations over a missing Rubik's Cube.

I immediately caught myself being completely annoyed by this spat.

I don't have time for this!

I had a lesson on sentences to teach! I didn't have time to worry about some stupid Rubik's Cube that may or may not have been stolen!

Sometimes it's tempting to think about how much easier teaching would be if it wasn't for the students -- Sometimes it's challenging to remember that there is no teaching without the students.

I had to remind myself that for every problem that occurs in school, there are actually two problems -- a teacher's problem and a student's problem and rarely are they ever the same.

I had to remind myself that I am the adult and that if I wanted Kevin to care about my problem -- teaching and learning sentences -- then I had to first show Kevin that I cared about his problem -- the missing Rubik's Cube.

I had to remind myself that I teach children first and curriculum second. Yes, sentences are critically important for teachers to teach and children to learn, but teaching children how to problem solve first may be our only chance of getting to academics like sentences.

So I walked into the hallway and asked Kevin, "What's up?"

He told me about his missing Rubik's Cube, and that he was certain Thomas had it in his locker.

I looked Kevin in the eye and said, "Kevin, I promise you that I will help you solve this problem and find your Rubik's Cube."

He looked at me and said, "Right now?"

I said, "No. Not right now. Right now I need to teach you about sentences and you need to learn about sentences -- but at the end of class, I promise that we will make time to find your Rubik's Cube. Can we do that?"

I could tell that Kevin really wanted to find it now, but he looked at me and reluctantly said OK.

Kevin and Thomas sat down and learned about sentences while I taught. With a few minutes left in class, I talked with Thomas about the Rubik's Cube. It didn't take long to discover that it was in his locker.

Kevin had his Rubik's Cube back.

The next day, I sat with the two boys in the hallway and debriefed this situation. Rather than punish Thomas for doing wrong, I worked with him and Kevin through a conversation about why he shouldn't steal. Thomas came to the conclusion that he shouldn't steal from Kevin, because he wanted to be Kevin's friend.

Now they are writing stories and learning to write sentences.

#comments4kids

I have found success with engaging students in reading and writing via blogging. 

Reading and writing are social activities that allow us to communicate with others. When we write something, we always have an audience in mind, even if it's ourselves. However, most of the time, students write for other people, and it's even cooler if those other people were more than just their teacher or their peers sitting next to them. 

This is why I have had success engaging even reluctant readers and writers in blogging. 

One of the hooks I often use is the world map widget that I have on my blog. This map allows a blogger to track the visitors and their locations. When I show this to students, they are often fascinated by how the written word can reach distances that are truly on the other side of the planet.

The red dots indicate the places people have accessed my blog while the ones that are blinking indicate people who are visiting my blog right now. I have yet to meet a child (or adult) that did not find this pretty darn cool.

I have helped a number of students start their own blog, and one of the first things I help them set up is this world widget. Once they have this widget, I get them to write up a blog post. Many of the kids are so excited to publish their post that they rush to their world widget to see if anyone visits - only to see nothing happen.

The problem is that publishing a blog post and waiting for visitors is like hitch-hiking in the Sahara -- no one knows you're there.

This is why it helps for the teacher to be a part of some kind of network. While there is no one right tool to tap into a network of connected people, I have found Twitter to be an excellent companion to blogging.

Once a student publishes a post, I then hop on Twitter and post a Tweet to the hashtag #comments4kids. After I do this, watching their world widget becomes a whole lot more fun!

One of the first times I did this, I had a student who blogged about wanting to get an Iguana, but wanted to ask others for their advice about Iguana's -- when I tweeted his post, he watched his world widget and shouted "someone from France is reading my post!" His smile was from ear to ear. This was a very reluctant reader and writer authentically engaged in reading and writing. Because these red dots kept showing up on the world map, our discussion turned into a geography lesson. When the kids themselves are asking the question, "where's Estonia?" you know you are doing something right.

Do I count how many visits they get on their blog? No.

Have I established a complex algorithm that combines their visits to comment ration? No.

Do I use a rubric that allows me to generate pre & post measurements that allow me to quantify the value added? No.

So how do I know this stuff is successful? If my students show a desire to go on reading and writing through blogging when class is over, then I know I'm on the right track. Where there is interest achievement tends to follow.

No testsandgrades required.

For more on how powerful comments for kids can be, read Kathy Cassidy's post It's Never "Just a Comment".

Making trouble

The problem with teaching children to think for themselves is that they might start thinking for themselves.

Chewing on ideas

I just read Ted Hutchings' latest post titled Technological Dissonance and if you have a minute, I think you should read it for yourself.

It's kind of weird how something you write can speak to others in ways they might never predict. For me, I appreciated the dissonance that Ted wrestled with over allowing technology such as video games into his family's home.

Here's how Ted started his post:

The idea for this post has been percolating for over a year, but I never seem to get around to actually writing it. I've changed titles, messed around with the topic and even now, I'm rewriting this introduction for the fourth or fifth time.

As someone who has been blogging pretty hardcore for about a year and a half, I know how the best posts can be the ones that sit as a draft for weeks or even months.

They sit there staring at you.

Sometimes you pull up that draft only to quickly close the laptop in frustration or avoidance. Sometimes you make edits or whole scale deletions, only to click undo.

So where am I going with this?

I think it's a damn shame that even the most unaccomplished writers can know the best writing comes from making time the variable and thoughtful prose the constant. And yet it's May - are you aware of how many children, some as young as grade 3, are put through some kind of written response standardized test? For these tests, time is the constant and thoughtful prose is the variable.

And what do we expect, when these kids are all given the same prompt that they've never seen before and have been told to write something thoughtful in the time allotted.

Writing for me is a highly personalized adventure - and if someone told me what I had to blog about, and that I only had x amount of time, I would tell them where to go and how to get there faster than you can say Jack Robinson.

Can you imagine how many children are turned off of writing because of these tests? Real learning is not likely to survive under such contrived environments.

If we are to move past spitting back the superficial, we all need more than a couple hours to chew on our ideas.

Writing because they want to

Every year, I do a writing project where the students take a movie clip of their choice and then novelize it. For example, I took a 4 minute clip from the movie Sahara and novelized it. Below is the clip and my novelization of the scene.





I use this project to show kids that writing can be a lot of fun, and I use it to teach the kids how to improve their writing skills. I find this works well because the kids actually want to know how to write dialogue with quotation marks and proper punctuation because they actually want to make their stories fun and cool to read. Because they see this project as an authentic use of their time and effort, I don't need to convince them to improve their writing, they tend to want to.

Most kids like to split their screen in half - on one half they have their movie, and on the other half they have Microsoft Word. This way, they can press play and pause quickly while writing their first draft based on what they see and hear from their movie clip.

A measure of success and engagement came when the recess bell rang, and one of my students asked "Can I stay in for recess and continue this?" I turned and said, "that's up to you." In the end, 13 out of my 20 students chose to stay in for recess, while the others went out for a break.

The transition was seamless. Those who wanted to go outside simply stowed their laptops and went on their way, while others kept hacking away at their stories. The room was eerily quiet with the exception of the clickity clack rising from a dozen keyboards.

I never made a big deal of it. I didn't praise anyone for staying nor did I comment on those who left. I didn't want to manipulate or place any pressure or guilt on anyone for their decision to stay or go.

It just was.

But deep down, I was pleased with it all. Those who went for recess had every right to go for a break - and the students who chose to stay provided me feedback with their actions louder than words could ever portray. They were willing to spend their own free will on continuing a writing project.

What more could I ask for?

Chinooks Edge Professional Development

I had a great day in Olds, Alberta where I gave two presentations at the Chinooks Edge Professional Development Day. For those who were in attendance, here is a follow up post featuring links that I promised that would supplement the discussions we had. Feel free to e-mail me if I neglect to provide a link on a topic you would like more information on.


Making Writing Fun:


Spelling Implications
Writing, Professional Development and Social Networking
How Twitter can connect you with others
Here's why Rubrics are not the savior for writing assessment. Video
Here's how games such as Rock Band can be used in the classroom
Here's how you can turn any game into a strategy guide project.
Here's why teaching writing as an exercise in following the rules can be dangerous
Here's how an alternative to traditional language arts exams.
Here's how I use movies to inspire writing projects. (Coming soon)




Questioning Questions:


Questioning Questions
Questions or Answers
Standardized Testing is Dumbing Down our Schools
Multiple Choice Tests Suck
Grading Effort: Unintended Consequences
Constance Kamii on constructivism
The behaviourism infection
Harmful Effects of Algorithms
Autonomy as the aim of education
What's wrong with this picture?
Covering Curriculum
Negotiated Curriculum

Nuke LaLouche meets Cormac McCarthy

I want to show how a scene from Bull Durham, the best baseball movie ever, and an exerpt from Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road can help us to rethink teaching. Watch the clip and then read the excerpt. Just a heads up, there are a couple F-bombs in this clip:



Ok, we'll come back to this clip.

Now take a look at an excerpt from Cormac McCarthey's Pullitzer Prize winning novel The Road:

That night they camped in a ravine and built a fire against a small stone bluff and ate their last tin of food. He'd put it by because it was the boy's favorite, pork and beans. They watched it bubble slowly in the coals and he retrieved the tin with the pliers and they ate in silence. He rinsed the empty tin with water and gave it to the child to drink and that was that. I should have been more careful, he said,


The boy didn't answer.


You have to talk to me.


Okay.


You wanted to know what the bad guys looked like. Now you know. It may happen again. My job is to take care of you. I was appointed to do that by God. I will kill anyone who touches you. Do you understand?


Yes.


He sat there cowled in the blanket. After a while he looked up. Are we still the good guys? he said.


Yes. We're still the good guys.


And we always will be.


Yes. We always will be.


Okay.

Could you understand what was going on in this excerpt?

Did you notice anything unconventional with the writing?

In case you didn't notice, there were no quotations marks to identify the dialogue. The reader is left to sort out the dialogue and the narration on his own. If you're like most people, the excerpt still made sense.

In the Bull Durham clip, Nuke LaLouche is young and naive, but despite his five cent head, he has been blessed with a million dollar arm, and so, as his mentor catcher, Crash Davis has been assigned to mold him into a big leaguer.

The point to be made here is that while Nuke is still in the minors, a nobody, the rule is he shouldn't have fungus on his shower shoes; however, as Crash points out, that little rule can go away if only Nuke can make it to the big leagues - become famous and rewrite the rules in his own image - become colourful.

Unfortunately for Nuke LaLouche, he's not in Cormac McCarthey's league.

There's a double standard here.

When Cormac McCarthy submits his story to the world, he is met with a Pulitzer Prize and a movie deal, but when my grade 6 language arts students forget to use quotation marks with their dialogue on their Provincial Achievement Test, they are docked marks. Punished.

And Nuke is a slob.

At some point in time, Cormac McCarthy was in grade 6 - the minor leagues, grinding it out with the other minor league authors. If Cormac McCarthy does as he's told and complies with the rules of writing, he continues to use quotation marks, and The Road either never gets written or drowns in mediocrity and obscurity because it is standardized. Of course the omission of quotation marks does not define The Road's greatness, but I think you get the bigger message here.

So when does Cormac McCarthy ever learn to be different. If we don't provide him with the opportunity to be wrong - to be unique and creative - we can only hope that he will defy the rules at his own peril.

When school is more about reproducing the teacher's knowledge rather than the student producing their own, we run the risk of extinguishing their creativity. We teach it out of them. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say we school it out of them.

If we can appreciate how Cormac McCarthy bends the rules to create something new and creative, then we have to provide students with a learning environment where they can grow their own creativity and find themselves.

In his book The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, Sir Ken Robinson points out that one size does not fit all:

Some of the most brilliant, creative people I know did not do well at school. Many of them didn't really discover what they could do - and who they really were - until they'd left school and recovered from their education...


These approaches to education are also stifling some of the most important capacities that young people now need to make their way in the increasingly demanding world of the twenty-first century - the powers of creative thinking. Our systems of educaiton put a high premium on knowing the single right answer to a question. In fact, with programs like No Child Left Behind (a federal program that seeks to improve the performance of American public schools by making schools more accountable for meeting mandated performance levels) and its insistence that all children from every part of the country hew to the same standards, we're putting a greater emphasis than ever before on conformity and finding the 'right' answers.

Artistry and creativity that becomes standardized ceases to be art and loses much of its creativity.
For every Cormac McCarthy out there who defies the rules and finds his own style, there are a thousand Nuke LaLouche's who are made to feel guilty for the fungus on their shower shoes.

So they comply and never become colourful.

Making Writing Fun

Are you tired of teaching writing with work sheets? Are your students tired of you teaching writing with work sheets? Has writing become a chore for your students? Are they reluctant to engage in writing? Are you a ‘Grammar Nazi’? Writing can and should be enjoyable, and this session will introduce some fun and engaging writing projects.

This session will guide you through a writing project that uses movies to teach sentence structure skills. These writing projects vary from using only a 10-20 minute movie clip to write a non-fiction paragraph that answers a question, to watching an entire movie and selecting a scene to novelize. During this session we will examine the ‘guts’ of writing which will include learning about: independent clauses, dependent clauses, simple, compound, complex and compound-complex sentences. WAIT! As boring as this might sound, it can be fun and enjoyable. Trust me - Give me a chance! I promise your students will learn and enjoy these writing projects.

For more information about booking Joe Bower for a lecture or workshop, please contact by e-mail: joe.bower.teacher@gmail.com


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