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Three Strategies to Align Teaching and Technology

by Miguel Guhlin January 4, 2023

written by Miguel Guhlin

Strategies that work. We all want and need strategies that align with research. Often as educators, we lose sight of how important that alignment is, and we may adopt practices and technologies that appear to help but, instead, distract. This diminishes the return on investment in expensive technologies that are unaligned to research.

Why Do Strategies That Work Matter?

Think about your work in the classroom as a teacher, a coach, and/or a school administrator. Go back to a time when you reflected on what worked and what didn’t. Did you brush off the disappointment of a failed digital tool or chalk it up to “It’s new?”

When implementing evidence-based instructional strategies and technology, what steps do you take? What illuminated path with marked trails and guideposts do you follow? Let’s take a look at three strategies to align instruction and technology to promote positive outcomes.

Guidepost #1: Connect with Students

Research has shown us that buzz words and phrases are sometimes grounded in what works. One such case is social-emotional learning (SEL). SEL works because it allows teachers to build relationships with students. That connection is all important. We now know that student brains will filter out the irrelevant. The catch is they decide what’s irrelevant, not you as the adult.

“When students feel as if they do not belong in a school setting, the cognitive energy that should be used on social engagement and learning is being used to scan for group barriers, discrimination and stereotypes”
Source: Myra Laldin, a researcher at the Research Schools International at Harvard Graduate School of Education via Learning Scientists Blog

SEL activities, such as temperature checks, games, and stories, connect us to students. They deepen relationships with students. When choosing and implementing a digital tool or activity, is it facilitating connection?

Did You Know?

Miguel will be facilitating Coaching: Strategies That Work, a TCEA 2023 session that focuses on coaching approaches. New to coaching? An old-hand? You’ll find something to love in this interactive session and walk away with a free app.

Guidepost #2: Track Student Progress

Empowering students to track their own progress toward learning objectives is key. You can support students’ efforts through the use of simple, tech-based formative assessment tools. These tools can both enable you to gauge students’ movement toward goals. They can also enable students to build their own self-assessments. Combine those assessments with self-reported grade tracking sheets.

Did You Know?

Looking for a round up of Formative Assessment Tools and Strategies for the Digital Classroom? Then be sure to check out Miguel’s TCEA 2023 session. You will leave with some fresh ideas, strategies, and digital tools.

When students are learning via an evidence-based instructional strategy, how do you know that students really are? Combine formative assessment digital tools into strategies and activities. For example, you can choose to Jigsaw Your Problem-Based Learning activities, while gauging student progress. Often, this can be done through tracking paper activities, classroom discussion, and products. You can even have students self-track what they are trying to accomplish. That’s true whether it’s an academic topic, or a blend of the two, such as Jigsawing Your Way Through Micro:Bits or virtual world building.

And, with those two important guideposts checked off your list, a third and final one is this:

Guidepost #3: Match Strategies and Tools

You may encounter a bevy of digital tools at the TCEA 2023 Convention and Exposition. Before you adopt them for your own use, take some time to explore. How do these tools fit into what you’re trying to do in the classroom? How can you implement evidence-based strategies with this tool? Do these tools support your efforts at encouraging student note-taking or outlining? How does a tool like, say Microsoft OneNote or LumaNotes, work for students?

An Example: Cave Art for Educators

In my TCEA 2023 session, Cognitive Cave Art, I ask a simple question: How do I engage students in cognitive task analysis? One way might be to create infographics for knowledge representation. There are ample tools to get the job done, so it’s important to know. In this session, like others that I lead, I will show off digital tools and their connection to a proven strategy.

Want to have authentic conversations, make connections, and find new ed tech tools? I hope you’ll join me at TCEA 2023 for my Ride the Mastodon session, an introduction to a new-to-many social media space.

You see, you know what works already. You have access to a wealth of proven strategies through the work of researchers. Those researchers include people like John Hattie, Mike Bell, Dr. Nancy Frey, Dr. Douglas Fisher, and Zaretta Hammond. When you think of infographics, you know the following:

Greater than fifty percent of learners are non-linguistic. This involves students generating a representation of new information. But that representation need NOT rely on language. “The average effect [of using non-linguistic representation] can impact student achievement,” says Marzano. Robert Marzano goes on to say, “It includes a seventeen percentile point gain.” That’s quite a bit when considering student achievement.” This happens because students are creating a model of their thinking.

Potential creations include concept maps, idea webs, and other types of nonlinguistic representation.

When you consider Guidepost #3 in this regard, you are asking yourself a powerful question:

“What digital tool makes thinking model creation possible for students?”

The rest is simply fun. Learning new tools and aligning them to what we know works as education professionals.

Question Others to Teach Ourselves

I hope you will join me at TCEA 2023 Convention and Exposition to explore these guideposts. It’s a space to ask questions of yourself and of others to enable you to teach yourself. Who knows, you may create a new model of thinking that transforms your teaching. Wouldn’t that be something?

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January 4, 2023 11 comments

ELAR English Language Arts ESL/ELL

SIOP Model and Digital Tools

by Miguel Guhlin October 23, 2024

written by Miguel Guhlin

How do you integrate language and content instruction? One established approach is the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) model. Let’s see how SIOP phases align with different learning intentions and instructional strategies and discover digital tools to support your teaching.

A Quick Overview of the SIOP Model

Let’s take a moment to review key areas of the SIOP model. The authors (Echevarria, Vogt, Short) designed it to support English language learners (ELLs). The SIOP model has eight inter-related components. Those components include the following:

Lesson preparation. Teachers create lessons that include content and language objectives.
Building background. This involves connecting new concepts to students’ personal experiences and prior knowledge.
Comprehensible input. Teachers use a variety of techniques to make content easy to understand for learners. These can include speaking in a clear way, using visuals, and hands-on activities.
Strategies. These strategies include teaching and modeling learning strategies to help students process and retain information.
Interaction. This involves giving students opportunities to practice language skills in a safe, supportive environment.

Below is a diagram I made to capture my understanding of the SIOP model (view full-size | get a copy):

Benefits of the SIOP Model

Many benefits have been ascribed to the SIOP model. You can find a round-up of them online at Jana Echevarria’s website. Here are a few:

Gains in academic achievement (source)
Development of personal and academic language skills (source)
Active participation and increased engagement
Differentiation aligned to students’ diverse needs and proficiency levels

What’s more, the SIOP model is often a go-to approach for supporting language learners. Echevarria makes the following point on her website linked above:

…SIOP instruction is making a positive learning difference for multilingual learners and other students who are in the classrooms. Teachers can learn to implement the model to a high degree with ongoing PD and support. No one is disadvantaged by SIOP instruction; rather, the focus on academic literacy and scaffolded instruction helps all students learn academic English and grade-level, content curricula better (source).

Now that you have a clear understanding of the phases of the SIOP model, let’s explore how it aligns to learning intentions. I’m curious to connect it to Hattie’s Visible Learning as well as Mike Bell’s The Fundamentals of Teaching.

Understanding SIOP Phases and Learning Intentions

As you may recall, learning intentions refer to what your intent is for students to learn. Having an awareness of your learning intensions, as well as what phase of learning students are in, can be useful. It’s useful because it enables you and students to choose specific high-effect instructional strategies. These strategies are often grouped according to three phases of learning:

Surface learning
Deep learning
Transfer learning

John Hattie points out the following when choosing what strategy works best to impact learning:

“What and when are equally important when it comes to instruction that has an impact on learning. Approaches that facilitate students’ surface-level learning do not work equally well for deep learning, and vice versa. Matching the right approach with the appropriate phase of learning is the critical lesson to be learned.”

With this in mind, it’s important to match high-effect size instructional strategies to the appropriate phase of learning students are in. To determine what phase of learning students are in, you will want to take advantage of formative assessments. What’s more, being aware of what your learning intention is for students can inform your next steps. Let’s briefly explore these points aligned to the SIOP model.

Lesson Preparation: Building the Foundation

“I use Quizlet to create interactive flashcards for key terms. It’s a game-changer for vocabulary retention!” says Mrs. Johnson, a 5th-grade teacher. In this initial phase, focus on surface learning through direct instruction and vocabulary programs. Both direct instruction and vocabulary programs are appropriate to use in this phase of learning (Surface Learning).

Surface learning is important because it is a critical step towards transfer learning:

…the process of developing sufficient surface knowledge to then move to deeper understanding such that one can appropriately transfer this learning to new tasks and situations. (Source: Hattie, Fisher, Frey in Visible Learning for Literacy)

To assist students in connecting the dots, it’s important to consider students’ prior knowledge. As Mike Bell, The Fundamentals of Teaching, puts it, “No one can learn anything if they cannot link it to something they already know.” On his website, Bell quotes psychologist David Ausubel:

If I had to reduce all of educational psychology to just one principle, I would say this: The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach him accordingly.

David Ausubel as cited

Our theory of the world, also known as our “schema,” is what makes up our prior knowledge. It is so important that Mike Bell enshrines it as the first step in his five step teaching approach. He encourages teachers to assess prior knowledge, as well as fill in missing knowledge.

Did You Know?
You can watch a TCEA Lunch and Learn on Prior Knowledge via the TCEA Community. Follow this link, then enter your login credentials to access. Not a TCEA member yet? Join.

A part of presenting new material (step two in his five-step process) involves linking new information to prior knowledge, using advance organizers, and connecting the abstract to the concrete. To put it simply, it involves connecting the dots.

Building Background: Connecting the Dots

“I love using Mindmeister for collaborative mind mapping,” says Mr. Rodriguez, a high school history teacher. “It helps students visualize connections between new concepts and what they already know.” In Mike Bell’s book, The Fundamentals of Teaching, memory is explained as a link to component parts of that memory. The component parts include our emotions, colors, shapes, tactile feelings. The network of links is the schema.

If some of the new concepts are held in long-term memory, “it takes less space in working memory.” You can see how someone can liken the responsibilities of a president to that of a parental guardian.

Mnemonics and integrating prior knowledge are crucial here. A key component is connecting the dots through graphical organizers, modelled and worked examples, as well as meta-cognitive tasks. Students can use graphic organizers and modeled examples to better understand and retain new information. They do this when they link new concepts to what they already know. This approach also enhances metacognitive skills. It helps them become more aware of their thinking.

As you can imagine, the SIOP model seeks to encompass this cognitive work. It covers critical steps of learning, such as:

Activating and assessing prior knowledge
Presenting new knowledge
Setting challenging tasks that involve collaboration, thinking, and examples
Providing feedback to learners for improvement, as well as questioning
Spaced repetition and deliberate practice

Connecting the dots takes advantage of several strategies that encouraging making connections. Those connections happen between prior and new knowledge, which lays the groundwork for deep learning phase of learning.

SIOP Phase with Learning Intention

Take a look at this chart and how it matches SIOP model phases with learning intentions, strategies, and digital tools.

SIOP Phase	Learning Intention	Instructional Strategies	Digital Tools	Example
Lesson Preparation	Surface Learning	Direct Instruction (.56), Vocabulary Programs (.62)	Quizlet, Kahoot	Using Quizlet to create flashcards for key vocabulary terms
Building Background	Surface Learning	Mnemonics (.65), Integrate with Prior Knowledge (.93)	Padlet, yED Live, Cmap Tools	Creating a mind map on yEd Live to connect new concepts with prior knowledge
Comprehensible Input	Surface Learning	Repeated Reading Programs (.80), Questioning (.49)	Newsela, Edpuzzle	Using Edpuzzle to embed comprehension questions in a video lesson
Strategies	Deep Learning	Metacognition Strategies (.52), Critical Thinking (.84)	Padlet Video Recording, Socrative	Students using video to explain their problem-solving process
Interaction	Deep Learning	Classroom Discussion (.82), Reciprocal Teaching (.74)	Zoom breakout rooms, Canva Whiteboard, Miro	Facilitating small group discussions in Zoom breakout rooms using a collaborative whiteboard
Practice & Application	Transfer Learning	Problem-Solving Teaching (.68), Transfer Strategies (.86)	Scratch, Minecraft Education, Minetest	Students applying coding concepts learned in class to create a game in Scratch or virtual world in Minetest
Lesson Delivery	Deep Learning	Elaboration and organization (.75), Concept Mapping (.62)	Pear Deck, Nearpod	Using Pear Deck to create interactive presentations with embedded formative assessments
Review & Assessment	Transfer Learning	Self-Reported Grades (1.33), Self-Judgement and Reflection (.81)	Google Forms, Seesaw	Students reflecting on their learning progress using a digital portfolio in Seesaw

Comprehensible Input: Ensuring Understanding

Repeated reading programs and strategic questioning enhance comprehension. Consider using Edpuzzle to embed questions in video lessons, promoting active engagement with content. Comprehensible input is a concept first suggested by Stephen Krashen. It exposes students to linguistic input slightly above their current language level (i+1). The reason for this is that i+1 allows learners to understand the new input. Strategic questioning can scaffold this process.

Use strategic questioning to do the following:

Get responses from students at their current level and slightly beyond. For example, a current level question might be, “What is the main character’s name?” An i+1 example might be “How might the main character’s actions influence the story’s outcome?”
Tailor questions to target specific language structures or vocabulary. For teaching past tense, an example might be “What did the protagonist do after he discovered the secret door?”
Ensure that question complexity is adjusted to ensure input remains at the optimal i+1 level. To adjust a question’s complexity, go from simple to complex. For example, shift from “Can you describe the setting of the story?” to “How does the setting contribute to the overall mood of the narrative?”

Both strategies (repeated reading and strategic questioning) can be useful in ensuring understanding.

Diving Deeper: Strategies and Interaction

Fostering Critical Thinking

Metacognitive strategies and critical thinking activities are key for deep learning. “I use Padlet Video to have students explain their problem-solving process. It’s amazing to see their metacognition in action!” says middle school science teacher, Ms. Lee. To encourage metacognition, consider using check-ins to enhance learning. According to Schraw (1998 as cited), checking in stimulates learners’ self-reflection on their own understanding. This, of course, leads to increased metacognitive awareness (source).

Promoting Meaningful Interaction

Classroom discussions and reciprocal teaching strategies encourage student engagement. You can use Zoom breakout rooms for small group discussions and collaborative whiteboards for idea sharing.

Applying Knowledge: Practice and Transfer

In applying knowledge phase, students are expected to apply what they have learned to new situations. In transfer learning, students apply what has been learned to novel situations. This may involve metacognition, collaboration, and problem-solving. This can be done in a variety of ways, including:

“Building virtual worlds has been fantastic for my students to apply coding concepts in a creative way,” notes Mr. Thompson, a technology integration specialist. One example could involve using virtual world building through Minetest or Minecraft. Other activities like story bins can also work well.

Stages of the Engineering Design Process

Public View Link | Template Link

Delivering Lessons and Assessing Progress

Facilitating lesson delivery often involves a dash of direct instruction, hands-on activities, classroom discussion. Through it all, the teacher is working to assess the level of understanding students have in the midst of a conversation.

Effective Lesson Delivery

Use elaboration, organization, and concept mapping to deepen understanding. Try Pear Deck for interactive presentations with embedded formative assessments. For example, when teaching photosynthesis, you can compare it to a factory taking in raw materials and outputting products:

Photosynthesis

Photosynthesis as a process can be a model for making widgets in a factory:

As you can see, concept maps can assist students in connect new information in such a way as to facilitate deeper comprehension. The visual structure can make it easier for students to see relationships. Tools like Pear Deck can integrate concept maps into interactive presentations. When students make their own diagrams, the diagrams reveal gaps in understanding. Teachers can look at what’s missing from the students’ view of a concept. Then, they can work to provide experiences that enable the student to learn.

Review and Self-Assessment

“I use Seesaw for digital portfolios. It’s an excellent tool for students to track and reflect on their progress over time,” suggests one elementary school teacher. When considering review and self-assessment, other strategies are also helpful. Two include self-reported grades and reflection for transfer learning.

Let’s consider some guided activities and see how they connect to the SIOP model phases.

SIOP Model Activity Examples

Here are some activity examples that match a particular SIOP model phase.

Activity	Description	SIOP Phase
Vocabulary Bingo	Create digital bingo cards with key terms	Lesson Preparation
Concept Connection	Use mind mapping tools to link new and prior knowledge	Building Background
Video Quiz Creation	Embed questions in educational videos	Comprehensible Input
Think-Aloud Recordings	Have students record their problem-solving process	Strategies
Virtual Jigsaw	Assign topics to groups for research and presentation	Interaction
Real-World Application Project	Design projects applying learned concepts to real scenarios	Practice & Application
Interactive Lecture	Create engaging presentations with built-in assessments	Lesson Delivery
Learning Journal	Implement digital portfolios for ongoing reflection	Review & Assessment

Additional Resources

SIOP Model Overview: A comprehensive guide to the SIOP model (K-12, Higher Education)
Edutopia’s Technology Integration Guide: Strategies for effective tech integration in classrooms (K-12)
TCEA Courses on Digital Learning: Professional development opportunities for educators (K-12, Higher Education)

October 23, 2024 0 comment

Five steps to data-informed student grouping in the classroom

Assessment Educational Research Good Teaching

How to Make Flexible, Data-Informed Student Groups

by Miguel Guhlin April 15, 2024

written by Miguel Guhlin

Would you believe that, according to teachers, behavior is the most important factor when it comes to grouping students? There are several reasons to group students, and, recent research suggests that there are benefits to creating student groups. The teacher can tailor them to optimize learning and use grouping students to address varied:

learning needs
abilities
interests

What does the research say?

Unfortunately, student grouping strategies focusing on grouping by ability have poor results. For example, ability grouping for gifted students has a low effect size (d=0.21). An alternative is flexible, data-informed grouping strategies. Let’s take a quick look at the research from Gest and Rodkin’s 2011 study. Teachers in that study reported that they grouped students for several reasons. Here are the top five reasons from most important to least important:

Behavioral Problems
Heterogeneous Ability Grouping
Homogeneous Ability Grouping
New Friendship
Existing Friendship

If behavior was the most important reason for student groups, what was the least important reason for grouping? That would be grouping students by similar ability levels or to reinforce friendships.

Flexible, Data-Informed Student Groups

In this approach, data informs the composition of student groups. This involves assessing, grouping, and regrouping students based on ongoing assessment data. This results in grouping students not by ability or prior achievement but rather by fresh, new data about the phase of learning they are in. This can have a certain appeal, no?

In this approach, you group students to meet the following needs:

Needs and performance. This ensures lessons are relevant and meet students where they are.
Current understanding and skills. Your informed insight enables you to personalize learning across subjects or topics based on their knowledge.
Include students of different abilities. With data in hand, you can more easily mix students of different abilities and backgrounds together.
Customize activities. Since you can use data to grasp where students are in their groups, you can create more tailored engagement activities.

While you could rely on digital grouping tools for the classroom, there is another way.

Five Steps for Flexible, Data-Informed Groups

To group your students, consider following the steps below. Note that you can use a variety of digital tools to facilitate each step.

Step 1: Conduct assessment. In this step, use low-stakes, just-in-time assessments to evaluate students and identify their current level of understanding and skill. Recognize that you will be reusing your assessments to track both individual and group progress.

Step 2: Form groups. Once you have processed the latest assessment data, create student groups that align with students’ learning needs.

Step 3: Consider SEL and class culture. Recognize students’ social and emotional needs. Building peer-to-peer relationships is critical. Support classroom culture with a keen awareness of culturally responsive teaching and brain-based learning approaches.

Step 4: Create custom learning activities. Align your instructional strategy (e.g. surface learning, deep learning, transfer learning) to the needs of the group and its members.

Step 5: Provide feedback for self-regulated learners. In dynamic groups, it’s important to provide useful feedback that empowers self-regulated learning.

Using Data to Group Students by Phase of Learning

Mermaid code graph generated by Claude.ai at the direction of the author

One of the challenges you may encounter with flexible grouping is not grouping students by ability. When you rely on flexible grouping that’s informed via assessment data, you are actually organizing students by the phase of learning they are in. These phases of learning include Surface Learning, Deep Learning, and Transfer Learning. To get a better grasp of where students are at in their learning using assessment data, identify their phase of learning with the SOLO Taxonomy. Here’s a quick overview of The SOLO Taxonomy:

Stage	SOLO Taxonomy	Hattie’s Term	Learning Phase?	What It Means	HES Instructional Strategies
1	*Pre-structural*	No Idea	May or may not have Prior Knowledge	Lack of understanding or knowledge of the concept	Build and/or activate prior knowledge
2	*Uni-structural*	One Idea	Surface Learning	Has limited understanding, but doesn’t know how to apply it or how it connects to other ideas	Three-Step Jigsaw Method, Summarization, Vocabulary Programs
3	*Multi-structural*	Many Ideas	Surface Learning	Has a basic understanding, but isn’t sure how to fit ideas together	Direct Instruction, Flipped Classroom, Note-Taking
4	*Relational*	Relate	Deep Learning	Understands how ideas fit together and the relationship between them; still needs scaffolding and instruction to be successful	Concept Mapping, Metacognition, Self-Judgement, Reflection
5	*Extended Abstract*	Extend	Transfer Learning	Can take what has been learned and make something new; directions are not needed	Problem-Based Teaching, Transfer Strategies

Source: Get a Clue: The SOLO Taxonomy

The SOLO Taxonomy descriptors make it easier to identify students’ grasp of ideas or concepts. What’s more, there is a rich group of highly effective strategies you can use depending on the phase of learning students are in.

The SOLO Taxonomy gives you a way to gauge the assessment data and put students in the correct group. The grouping is important because it allows you to match the most effective instructional strategy to the student’s need. For example, students in a surface learning phase may range from lacking any background knowledge to having a basic understanding. However, that basic understanding still lacks a conceptual understanding of how ideas fit together.

Here’s a quick chart you can use to guide you :

Examples of flexible groups that are create based on students' phase of learning. — **View full size** | **Get a copy**

Some Parting Thoughts

Grouping students by behavior isn’t the most effective method. Instead, try using fresh data to assist you in creating groups that support learning. Ensure every student receives exactly what they need to thrive. The role you play is crucial. Remember that grouping strategies are about meeting students where they are and using informed insight (e.g. The SOLO Taxonomy) and strategies (e.g. Surface/Deep/Transfer Learning strategies) to guide them to success.

April 15, 2024 0 comment

Amazing Lesson Design Outline (ALDO) created by author

Educational Research Good Teaching

Meet ALDO: Amazing Lesson Design Outline

by Miguel Guhlin January 11, 2022

written by Miguel Guhlin

Ever wish you had an easy-to-follow checklist when designing learning for students? I know I have…often. Some of my colleagues effortlessly design amazing lessons, but I have to plod through each point. But lesson design is something that is critical to ultimate success in the classroom for each student. That’s why I’d like to take a moment to share my latest version of the outline I use. At the end, you will find a custom GPT you can use to get an AI spin on ALDO.

You can also explore this choice board organized with the outline in mind:

ALDO Choice Board — **Get your own copy**

As you work through this list, ask yourself, “What schema or plan do I follow?” If you show me your district’s mandated lesson plan format, well, that may not get the job done. At the end of this blog entry, I’ll share a heuristic, a Google Doc, that you can use. I like it because it combines many resources in one place and works to help you more efficiently plan your lesson design.

For now, let’s work through the major components of my Amazing Lesson Design Outline (ALDO). Ready? Let’s get started.

Did You Know?

Robert M. Gagne’s Theory of Instruction (1965) offers some suggestions worth revisiting. He divides instruction into nine events. Those events include 1) Gaining attention; 2) Informing learners of objectives; 3) Stimulating recall of prior learning; 4) Presenting the stimulus; 5) Providing learning guidance; 6) Eliciting performance; 7) Providing feedback; 8) Assessing performance; and, 9) Enhancing retention and transfer. You might also enjoy Mike Schmoker’s Focus: Elevating the Essentials visual or Madeline Hunter’s version. Some prefer the Gradual Release Model. When considering amazing lesson design, it’s important to remember this is well-traveled ground. Find what inspires you.

“Teachers must place a strong emphasis on rigor, relevance, but most of all, on developing relationships with children,” says Dr. Asa Hiliard, former Director of Urban Studies at Georgia State University. I’ve seen this firsthand. Let me share that with you.

Watching my wife, a masterful second grade teacher, you’d never guess she had an outline. Her lesson design first includes building powerful relationships with her students. It has her finding out what TV shows they like, what they like to eat, their life story, and building connections through an ongoing conversation with her class. She focuses in to connect academic content to specific students. Her approach leaves me in awe. When she asks her students to get to work, they do. When it’s time to behave, they do.

The first part of my lesson design outline? It’s build relationships. As Dr. James Comer (Yale University) says:

No significant learning can occur without a significant relationships of mutual respect, teacher to student.

“Brain-based learning can positively impact student motivation, attitudes and academic achievement,” say researchers. Without relationships, students won’t trust what you have to say. Absent powerful relationships between students, you have no community. And that would be a tragedy because of the next step.

2 – Assessment

As coaches and teachers, we have to, as Dr. John Hattie says, “Know our impact.” If you don’t know where students are, you will be unable to give them feedback on future growth. Worse, students won’t be able to self-regulate their own learning when given feedback. Students have to be clear on what they are to know and do. They have to know where they stand in their own learning relevant to growth.

To gauge where students are in their learning, you need to assess them before, during, and after. And those assessments can be low-stakes. They can tie into a wide variety of strategies that are proven to work, including retrieval practice and spaced vs massed practice. They can also rely on a wide variety of digital tools designed for that purpose.

Tip: You may want to use the SOLO Taxonomy to chart student growth. Learn more about SOLO via this blog entry.

3 – Teaching and Learning

The first step for those savvy with brain-based learning research is to engage students. Once you have figured how to best engage students, give thought to another question.

“What high-impact approaches align to the learning intention?” That’s a question that kept me up and reading. How can we align effective, evidence-based strategies to students’ learning needs? You can find a variety of evidence-based, high-effect size strategies that you can use at the best time.

Remember, only rely on one strategy at a time. For example, don’t try to put in place two teaching strategies like direct instruction and flipped classroom. Pick one. The same for students. Avoid trying to teach students to do concept mapping and outlining at the same time. Focus on one until you and your students can do it really well.

Social Media Response to ALDO

Thanks to those of you on social media who have shared ALDO with others. Here’s what some of you are saying:

Fantastic visual representation of the stages of learning and using a critical lense when creating lesson experiences! I can’t wait to use this with our new Ts as they continue to deepen their thinking abt. teaching/learning. Thx! via Meg Burke

Thank you for this wonderful resource! I’m definitely sharing it with my teachers! After having a coaching conversation this morning with a teacher about her PBL lessons, this is a great resource for deep and transfer teaching/learning with intentional design. TY via Myla Lee

The “Amazing Lesson Design Outline” (ALDO) created by Miguel Guhlin @mguhlin for @TCEA features mountains of terrific teaching strategies intuitively organized. Wow! https://bit.ly/3A99v6M via Todd Finley

Great distinction between Surface, Deep, and Transfer Learning. via LanguageTeachingLab

Did You Know?

Get a guided introduction to Hattie’s work via the TCEA Strategies That Work courses. What’s more, you get powerful videos, a $49 TCEA membership, and CPE hours for the same or less than buying a book. You have fifteen courses to choose from, including the latest Evidence-Based Teaching course.
The Evidence-Based Teaching course provides a detailed walkthrough of the Amazing Lesson Design Outline (ALDO), including the research underpinnings. It’s the perfect way to introduce your instructional coaches, teachers, and administrators to research that works. Participants earn 12 CPE hours, a digital badge, and certificate upon completion.

4 – Assess and Gauge Progress

As you did in Step Two, take a moment to re-assess students. Discover where they are in relation to the learning objective(s). You can rely on existing goals.

A Cry for Help: I Can’t Form an Online Community

An email request for help came in the other day. My diagnosis? The teachers had not put in place (yet) what they needed to create a sense of community. As a result, it made everything they tried to do difficult. My prescription? Intensify relationship-building efforts with teachers and students. Also, put into place the following tips:

1- Model for teachers social and emotional learning opportunities for virtual classroom use appropriate for the middle school students.

2- Set up criteria, such as a rubric, not as a staff assessment but, for a self-assessment checklist teachers can use when planning lessons. That checklist is the Amazing Learning Design Outline (ALDO) that appears later in this blog entry.

3-Adapt evidence-based strategies to support instruction. For example, this includes direct instruction, jigsaw for introducing concepts and ideas, classroom discussion and/or reciprocal teaching for digging deeper, problem-based teaching, and self-reported grades. Remember, use only one strategy at a time depending on the learning intention.

4-Implement coaching for results. I like Diane Sweeney’s model and suggest you explore the Coaching for Results series (Parts Three, Four, and Five are relevant here). Diane Sweeney has a handy one-pager that is designed to assist coaches with teacher work. It incorporates formative assessments, including entry/exit tickets.

5 – Reflect

Make sure to take some time to reflect on what worked and what did not for both you and your students. What role did technology play in enhancing teaching and learning? You might also ask yourself, What could I do differently next time? How can I assist students in becoming more metacognitive about their own learning experience?

Remember that reflection isn’t only for you as the teacher. It is also for students to engage in.

Get ALDO, the Amazing Lesson Design Outline

Ready to get the ALDO? Keep it by your side as you are planning a lesson or preparing activities. The links to digital tools and resources will soon become gateways to new ideas.

Let’s take a moment to walk through the creation of the prompt via video:

Test the ALDO Coach GPT

Update 1/20/2024: Please note that ALDO has been updated with the latest effect sizes from the Visible Learning MetaX database, and converted to Canva format (Canva is free for educators). Feel free to make copies and share widely so long as credit is given as indicated and original authors (cited in bibliography on page one) remain included.

Get a copy of ALDO v2 (shown above) | View Full Size

Want to view the OLD ALDO v1? Use these links: View the ALDO v1 | Get a Copy of v1

January 11, 2022 0 comment

Educational Research

Get a Clue: The SOLO Taxonomy

by Miguel Guhlin November 18, 2020

written by Miguel Guhlin

“Who did it? Was it Colonel Mustard with a rope in the billiard room?” Murder and mystery have enthralled many over the years. If you’re an amateur detective, then you may appreciate the connection to the learning process. Games like CLUE/CLUEDO may come to mind as you consider a different taxonomy of learning than Bloom’s Taxonomy. The learning process isn’t dissimilar to assembling clues and connecting them to solve a crime. Do you agree it is an apt analogy?

Let’s get a little background on a different taxonomy of learning.

“It is unusual for isolated cognitive categories to play a significant role in human thought or behavior. We normally function on the basis of much larger conceptual structures, the schemes or schemas that are constructed out of complex and often dynamic organizations of categories.”
–Frank Smith, Understanding Reading

The Power of Schema

Like a character in the game of CLUE, learning is often about building a schema or framework to better understand what’s happening. When you first play the game, you may not know the conceptual structure of the game. As you learn the structure, or schema, it becomes easier to predict the outcome and see how the clues fit together.

Rumelhart (1980) saw schemes as the building blocks of cognition, comparing them with the scripts of plays that can be performed by different groups of actors in different settings. Comprehension, according to Rumelhart and Ortony (1977), is the confirmation of tentative hypotheses about what schemes are relevant by finding the “slots” into which the details of events fit.
(Source: As cited in Understanding Reading)

When trying to solve a murder mystery, as in CLUE, it’s important to know the actors, how they behave. The only way to do that is to make educated guesses about who they are. It is the same when when learning something new. As learners, like players in CLUE, we work together with (and against) others to construct schemes or stories that fit what’s happened or happening.

In real life, we don’t always know what twists and turns may result along the way. We’re not sure what steps we will take to achieve the desired end. That’s why a taxonomy of learning can be helpful. It can provide a schema for understanding learning we participate in or facilitate for others.

How the Taxonomy Helps

When we learn, the end goal is the application of new learning to novel situations. Those novel situations may have similar elements to what we may have learned in the past, but they are seldom identical. Extraneous information may be included, and we have to sort out the irrelevant. How do we do that? A learning taxonomy scaffolds our efforts to build a schema. In a meta-cognitive way, it supports our learning until we can make up our own theory. And, these theories are unique to us since we are singular beings.

Image Source: https://edte.ch/blog/2019/11/22/solo-taxonomy-question-chains/

Introducing the SOLO Taxonomy

The SOLO Taxonomy has been around since I graduated from eighth grade. In spite of that, I never learned about John Biggs and Kevin Collis’ creation in 1982. It needs little introduction since heavyweights like Peter DeWitt and Pam Hook have spent some time explaining it. Yet, as I mentioned, it’s important to build one’s own theory of understanding. To do so, I have juxtaposed various explanations. These explanations are organized in a simple table.

The SOLO Taxonomy Created by author

Stages of the SOLO Taxonomy Explained

In trying to understand the SOLO Taxonomy, I asked myself a few questions:

What do each of the stages represent or mean?
How would John Hattie, who supports the SOLO Taxonomy, describe each stage?
What learning phase (e.g. surface learning, deep learning, transfer learning) is commensurate with each stage?
How could I describe what it means in simple terms?
Fortunately, Pam Hook has created a four minute video using LEGOs that explains the SOLO Taxonomy. I watched it and tried to adapt the explanation into the table below. Let me know what you think. Does it make sense?

Stage	SOLO Taxonomy	Hattie’s Term	Learning Phase?	What It Means
1	*Prestructural* – incompetence (they miss the point).	No Idea	May or may not have Prior Knowledge	Lack of understanding or knowledge of concept.
2	*Unistructural* – one relevant aspect	One Idea	Surface Learning	Has an idea of what it is but not what to do with it or how it connects to other ideas.
3	*Multistructural* – several relevant and independent aspects	Many Ideas	Surface Learning	Has a basic understanding but not sure how to fit ideas together.
4	*Relational* – integrated into a structure	Relate	Deep Learning	Understands how ideas fit together and the relationship between them. Still needs scaffolding and instructions to be successful.
5	*Extended Abstract*– generalized to new domain	Extend	Transfer Learning	Can take what has been learned and make something new, directions not needed

As I review the table, it starts to make sense how the SOLO Taxonomy is a good fit for Hattie’s ideas about surface, deep and transfer learning. The next step might be to ask oneself, what strategies fit well within each stage of the SOLO Taxonomy? In some ways, the taxonomy reminds me of the game of Clue.

Get a Clue: The SOLO Taxonomy

SOLO Taxonomy As you read the following, ask yourself if this aligns to the five stages listed in the table above. How would you modify them? Don’t be shy, leave your thoughts in the comments.

Something has happened. You’re not sure what happened, why it happened or how it occurred. You simply feel an imperative to learn more to resolve the gap in your understanding.
A clue is found that suggests more information is needed. You try to make this clue fit into your existing schema or understanding of the world, but you soon realize it doesn’t fit. You begin to dig for more clues.
More clues are found, but you’re not sure how these fit together or if they are part of a different problem. You need to make guesses of what happened and figure out how the clues fit together. If you can do this with others, that may help.
Through various means, individual and cooperative, you see the relationship between the clues that have been found. You have a theory of what happened. When you apply it to the current learning problem, it fits and you feel the flush of victory. Your new schema explains the current situation, but you’re not sure if it will work for the next one.
You encounter a fresh problem and you apply your ability to find clues and understand how they fit together to solve this. You adapt your schema, or modify it to make a new one, that fits the clues for the new learning problem. You understand how they are the same and how they are different. You look for new ways to apply your theory of problem solving to other situations.

Does that work for murder mysteries? Let’s put this into the context of instructional strategies that work. That is, strategies that are based on proven research and that accelerate student growth.

SOLO Taxonomy with Strategies That Work

It may come as no surprise that I’ve taken to describing high-effect size instructional strategies (HESIS) as “Strategies That Work.” In fact, you can find two online courses that capture this understanding, along with a chart. As you might imagine, we can easily extend the table above with the Matching Strategies and Digital Tools chart. To give you an idea of what that might look like, here’s a simple version without the SOLO Taxonomy definition of their terms:

Stage	SOLO Taxonomy	Hattie’s Term	Learning Phase?	What It Means	HES Instructional Strategies
1	*Pre-structural*	No Idea	May or may not have Prior Knowledge	Lack of understanding or knowledge of concept.	Build and/or activate prior knowledge
2	*Uni-structural*	One Idea	Surface Learning	Has an idea of what it is, but not what to do with it or how it connects to other ideas	Three-Step Jigsaw Method, Summarization, Vocabulary Programs
3	*Multi-structural*	Many Ideas	Surface Learning	Has a basic understanding, but not sure how to fit ideas together	Direct Instruction, Flipped Classroom, Note-Taking
4	*Relational*	Relate	Deep Learning	Understands how ideas fit together and the relationship between them; still needs scaffolding and instructions to be successful	Concept Mapping, Metacognition, Self-Judgement, Reflection
5	*Extended Abstract*	Extend	Transfer Learning	Can take what has been learned and make something new; directions not needed	Problem-Based Teaching, Transfer Strategies

As I wrote this blog entry, I was assembling clues about the SOLO Taxonomy. I was figuring out ways to better understand the taxonomy so I can use it as an aid to learning. I moved steadily from pre-structural to relational. The next step is, How can I take what I’ve learned and make something new? That’s the challenge we all face as learners, isn’t it?

November 18, 2020 0 comment

Created by author, adapted from Mike Bell (2021) The Six Steps.

Artificial Intelligence

The LEARNS Cycle: Putting AI in Instruction, Part 2

by Miguel Guhlin August 5, 2024

written by Miguel Guhlin

In the part 1 of this blog series, we discovered how AI tools can be integrated into the first step of the LEARNS Cycle, “Locate.” This stage is where learners identify their current knowledge and skills related to a topic or learning objective. In this second installment of the series, you will read more about the next step, “Explore”. This stage is all about discovering and engaging with new information, concepts, and resources to expand your knowledge and skills. For those familiar with the SOLO Taxonomy, we will also dig into Surface Learning.

Exploring is Critical

As educators, we know that exploration is a crucial component of the learning process. It’s where students go beyond their existing understanding. They dig into fresh ideas, perspectives, and materials. So, then, how can AI support this essential step in the LEARNS Cycle?

Once again, I’ve turned to the work of Mike Bell, author of The Fundamentals of Teaching, who connects AI tools with evidence-driven, research-based instructional strategies to make certain technology enhances the learning experience.

Let’s take a look at how AI could help out during the “Explore” stage.

Explore

Explore is composed of the following concepts:

Organize Your Thoughts: Use charts and outlines.
Use Your Senses: See, hear, and do to learn better.
Make It Real: Use real-life examples.
Draw It Out: Use pictures to help understand.

Instructional Strategy	AI Tool Example	Description
Graphic Organizers	Canva for Educators, Creately	Creately offers premade templates and drag-and-drop tools to create Venn diagrams, concept maps, and flow charts, helping students organize information visually
Structured Note-Taking	Notion AI	Notion AI assists in organizing notes using methods like the Cornell method or mind mapping, enhancing the structure and clarity of students’ notes
Multisensory Instruction	Nearpod	Nearpod integrates multimedia content, including visuals, audio, and interactive activities, to engage multiple senses and enhance learning retention. No AI tools, however
Demonstrations and Experiments	Curipod	Curipod allows teachers to create interactive lessons and experiments, helping students experience concepts firsthand through engaging activities
PBL, Case Studies	ChatGPT, Claude	Generate real-world problems and scenarios for students to solve, making learning more relevant and authentic. Or present case studies for collaborative analysis.
Sketchnoting and Storyboarding	Boardmix, Canva Magic Write	Sketchnoting works by allowing students to create visual notes with text, images, and symbols, enhancing understanding and recall. Create storyboards to visually represent processes, sequences of events, or narratives, aiding in the breakdown and understanding of complex information

Presenting New Materials

AI can be a powerful ally in the “Explore” phase of the LEARNS Cycle. One way to ensure that is explore suggested uses that facilitate presentation of new materials. In the chart below, you will find links to various AI tools for each concept. Relevant strategy research is also included for each line item.

Concept	Suggested Use	Instructional Strategy	Strategy Research
Organize Your Thoughts	Use an AI tool to create a concept map of the key ideas when presenting a new topic, like photosynthesis.	Concept Mapping	Learn more
Organize Your Thoughts	Use an AI diagramming tool to create comparative visuals when presenting new information about animal species, like mammals and reptiles.	Comparing and Contrasting	Learn more
Use Your Senses	Utilize an AI-powered virtual lab to demonstrate experiments when introducing new scientific concepts, like states of matter.	Experiments	Learn more
Use Your Senses	Integrate AI-generated music and art to create multi-sensory experiences when introducing new concepts in the arts.	Multi-sensory Learning	Learn more
Make It Real	Incorporate AI-generated, real-life examples when teaching persuasive writing techniques for topics like environmental issues.	Authentic Learning Experiences	Learn more
Make It Real	Use an AI-powered adaptive learning platform to provide real-world context when introducing new math skills, like budgeting and personal finance.	Problem-based Learning	Learn more
Draw It Out	Employ an AI storyboarding tool to visually present the sequence of events when introducing historical narratives, like the American Revolution.	Visualization	Learn more
Draw It Out	Utilize an AI comic strip generator to visually present new information about processes, like the water cycle.	Visualization	Learn more

As you can see, there are ample AI tools available today. Whether you choose to use them in the classroom or not is your choice, however, these curated lists will assist you in digging deeper into how the EXPLORE phase of the LEARNS Cycle can leverage AI tools.

But Wait, There’s More from Diffit AI

If you use school-focused AI tools, you may notice that these are not mentioned specifically in the chart for Explore stage in the cycle. You can, however, find many of the activities for instructional strategies in these multi-purpose school AI tools.

Here are what these look like in only one of the tools, Diffit for Teachers. In other blog entries in this series, other school AI specific solutions are shared.

How could EXPLORE be enhanced with tools like Diffit AI, you ask? When I took the prompt from the “Draw It Out” that focuses on visually presenting new information, here is what Diffit came up with:

What I found most interesting were the activity templates that Diffit is able to generate to summarize learning, learn vocabulary, reading and writing strategies, text analysis (including CER), and collaboration. There’s a ton more, as well.

Have you used any of these tools? Let us know about your experience in the comments.

August 5, 2024 0 comment

Science Science Social Studies STEM/STEAM

Exploring Extreme Heat Science: Five Resources for Educators on Climate Change

by Miguel Guhlin August 18, 2023

written by Miguel Guhlin

All over the world, people are longing for a cool breeze to relieve the extreme heat. As school begins, it’s important to learn about extreme heat. It is sobering to think that this summer may be one of the coolest ones that people experience from this point on. If you’re a middle or high school science teacher, or even if you’re not, you may be getting interested in the effects of climate change. Let’s explore some school-friendly resources helpful for educating students, parents, and staff about climate change. Let’s start with some vocabulary, then explore the resources available.

July 2023 was Earth’s hottest month on record by a wide margin. July’s global average temperature of 16.95 degrees Celsius (62.51 degrees Fahrenheit) was a third of a degree Celsius (six-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit) higher than the previous record set in 2019…. “It’s a stunning record and makes it quite clearly the warmest month on Earth in ten thousand years,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research in Germany.
(source)

Clarifying Vocabulary

Before jumping into a list of resources, it might help to clarify vocabulary. You may have heard about these terms in the news or encountered them in reading. Here are some common vocabulary terms relevant to extreme heat.

What is Climate Change? This refers to the increase in global temperatures resulting from human-made greenhouse gases. Effects include “loss of sea ice, melting glaciers and ice sheets, and sea level rise.” And, of course, more intensifying waves of heat (source).
What is the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT)? This is a measure of heat stress in direct sunlight. To calculate it, scientists use a complex formula. That formula includes “temperature, humidity, wind speed, sun angle, and cloud cover.” The last, cloud cover, provides insight into solar radiation (source).
What is a Heat Index? This measures heat stress in the shade. It considers temperature and humidity.

These terms assist us in better understanding how to gauge the heat experienced.

How Extreme Heat Affects Schools

The Summer of 2023 is on track to be Texas’ most extreme with a high number of 100-degree or more days. In June 2023, the temperature went over 100 degrees 250 times. Some school districts are putting heat practices into place to safeguard students.

Consider Dallas ISD’s policy:

Teams can’t practice from noon to 6 p.m. to avoid heat issues. They also take a wet bulb, globe temperature (WBGT) index reading that combines temperature, humidity, wind and cloud cover.

Above 92.1, practice stops. 92.1 isn’t the outdoor temperature or heat index, though. (source)

The heat index and WBGT temperature provide useful information. They assist us in understanding how long one can be outside.

Bar graphs of Climate Change Indicators: Heat Waves. — Image Source: **Climate Change Indicators: Heat Waves**

As a K-8 educator, how long can you let kids play outside for recess or P.E.? It all depends on the heat index or wet bulb temperature. This comes down to a student’s sweat not evaporating (and not cooling off their bodies). Computing wet bulb temperature can be difficult, but to make it easier, you can use an online Wet Bulb calculator.

Some examples of wet bulb temperatures dangerous to human life:

Get out of the sun within 30 minutes if the WBGT is…

86 (35° C or 95°F with 70% Humidity)
85.6 (37° C or 98.6° F with 60% Humidity)

Get out of the sun after 45 minutes if the WBGT is…

84.7 (38° C or 100° F with 55% Humidity)
85.9 (40° C | 104° F with 50% Humidity)
83.5 (42° C | 107.6° F with 40% Humidity)

Weather.gov has a list of suggested actions and impact prevention. For teachers who may be on “outside duty” this summer, it can be quite dangerous for older and immuno-compromised staff as well as for children.

A chart of the daily average global temperatures. — Image Source: **The Visual Capitalist**

Looking Back at the Data

An often-asked question is, “Was it really this hot back in the 1890s? How about the 1990s?” The answer may surprise you. You can use Weather Spark to see graphs for weather around the country. This set of charts from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows changes. You can see frequency, duration, season, and intensity:

Image of the August 2023, Monthly Forecast, CDC Tracking — Source: **August of 2023, Monthly Forecast, CDC Tracking**

Let’s take a look at a few resources you may find helpful in your work as an educator. Some are usable with K-12 students.

1. Mapping Extreme Heat

President Biden’s HEAT.gov website is a National Integrated Heat Health Information System. You can find a wide variety of heat-tracking tools online. What’s amazing is how many provide learners with access to a way to map the heat. Some tools like the Climate Change Tracker, allow you to enter a zip code and see the heat index:

Here’s a round up of those that provide raw data and graphs you and your grade 6-12 students can use:

There are many tools available that combine real data with maps. Others offer already-made maps you can view. Scientists update the maps on a regular basis. One example is this interactive map, an EMS Surveillance Heat Tracker (announced 8/9/2023):

As you can see from the map above, you can see how many times emergency services are deployed to assist those affected by extreme heat.

Source: Climate LIVE K12: Natural Solutions for Unnatural Problems

2. Columbia Climate School

The Columbia Climate School offers a series of webinars students can watch. Geared for students in grades 6-12, 8-12, or 9-12, they discuss climate change in easy-to-understand terms. Here are some of their titles:

Grades 6-12
Climate Justice in New York City
Grades 8-12
Paying Attention to Critical Climate Messages from the Polar Regions
The Climate Symphony: How Climate Variability Impacts Global Rainfall Patterns
Grades 9-12
Everything You Wanted to Know About Climate Mobility But Were Afraid to Ask
Harnessing the Power of Communities to Fight Flooding and Protect Our Waterways

You can check their K12 Student Educators Events page for a timeline. Past events display a link to the recording.

3. National Science Teaching Association (NSTA)

The NSTA offers a variety of videos on its Our Beautiful Planet website. Each seeks to showcase climate science research. Videos are five to seven minutes long and include classroom lesson plans.

Here are a few of the free resources available:

A Carbon Free Future
Fire on the Mountain
Saving Our Shores
After the Flames
Dust Rising
And many more

4. Melting Ice

Source: Land Ice Loss in Antarctica, **NASA Global Climate Change**

The growing loss of sea ice, glaciers, and more is raising a few eyebrows. There is genuine concern among scientists. Antarctica is losing ice mass due to melting at an average rate of 150 billion tons per year. Greenland is adding to the sea level rise with 270 billion tons of melted ice (source).

NASA’s Climate Time Machine offers a sobering look at changes in the following areas:

Sea Ice
Sea Level
Carbon Dioxide
Global Temperature
Ice Sheets
Ocean Warming

Each offers a time-lapse featuring some change. You can watch global temperature rise from the year 1884 through 2022. It’s amazing to see the map change from blue to red the closer one gets to the present. The Sea Ice map shows changes from 1979 through 2022 as the ice melts.

NASA’s Images of Change also offers before and after views. Consider the change in the snow of the Sierra Nevada from 2022 to 2023:

5. Teaching Climate in Texas

You can model approaches like Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER) for students. Given extreme heat waves blanketing the country and the world, you can also use Problem-Based Learning (PBL). Other strategies include:

Conducting a lab as well as
Encouraging students to take measurements and try wet bulb temperature experiments
Viewing relevant videos
Reading a story or novel on the topic
Working in a school garden (source)

What’s more, you can take advantage of resources such as:

Bonus Resource: University of Maine

The University of Maine also offers a variety of resources and websites. Be sure to explore these to see images of Earth.

**Get a copy of this Multimedia Text Set as a Google Doc**

When I first started reading about extreme heat, my hope had been to learn more about it. In my own journey to record temperatures, explore what wet bulb temperature means, I learned quite a bit. I have no doubt students in grades 6-12 would appreciate access to information about the world around them. Facilitate their exploration.

August 18, 2023 0 comment

Science Science STEM/STEAM

Two Digital Tools to Support Inquiry Learning

by Miguel Guhlin March 15, 2023

written by Miguel Guhlin

Did you know you can improve the success of inquiry learning efforts with digital learning environments? Researchers report that educational technology tools can enhance different phases of inquiry-based learning. These inquiry phases constitute the inquiry cycle. Let’s review the results of the research and explore some suggestions that address the use of digital tools to support inquiry cycle phases.

Note: Content in this blog entry references a paper appearing in ScienceDirect. The paper is “Phases of inquiry-based learning: Definitions and the inquiry cycle.” Authors include Margus Pedaste, Mario Mäeots, Leo A. Siiman, Ton de Jong, Siswa A.N. van Riesen, Ellen T. Kamp, Constantinos C. Manoli, Zacharias C. Zacharia, Eleftheria Tsourlidaki. Read the CC-BY-NC-ND licensed paper online.

Why Is Inquiry Learning Effective?

If you read John Hattie, you’ll see that inquiry based teaching has an average effect size of 0.46. The Visible Learning Meta X database describes it in this way:

Inquiry-based teaching is an educational practice. Students behave as scientists or philosophers. They generate questions and seek to develop answers through the accumulation of evidence. This could include asking questions and solving problems. It often includes procedures such as small-scale investigations and practical projects.

Let’s explore how inquiry-based learning happens:

Students follow methods and practices similar to those of professional scientists. They do this to construct knowledge.
Learners formulate hypotheses and then test them.
They test hypotheses by conducting experiments and/or making observations.

This is not dissimilar to the Scientific Method, as shared in a previous TCEA blog entry, Interactive Science: Labs to Master the Scientific Method.

Problem-Based Learning, Project-Based Learning, and Design Thinking Learning are variants of inquiry learning.

What Are the Five Phases of Inquiry?

The five phases of inquiry researchers identified include:

Orientation
Conceptualization, which includes questioning and hypothesis generation
Investigation, which includes exploration/experimentation leading to data interpretation
Conclusion
Discussion, which includes reflection and communication

In total, the five phases with their subphases add up to twelve possible components. You can see them articulated in the diagram shown above. Elaborating on that process, you can see this diagram from researchers below:

A more detailed infographic flow chart shows the relationship between the 5 phases of inquiry including up to 12 possible components. It also outlines examples of each phase. — Screenshot by author

Scaffolding Inquiry Learning with Technology

The authors in the study cited two amazing tools you may be unfamiliar with. Those include:

1. The Go-Lab Ecosystem

The intent of the Go-Labs is to assist teachers in finding online labs that enrich learning.

Online labs provide your students with the possibility to conduct scientific experiments. These experiments occur in an online environment. Some labs offer an opportunity to experiment with real equipment from remote locations.

Virtual labs simulate the scientific equipment. Data sets present data from already performed lab experiments. Combine labs with dedicated Apps to create Inquiry Learning Spaces (ILSs).

Go-Lab organizes the labs by age range, lab types, big ideas of science, and/or subject domains. You will find anything from astronomy to geography, math, physics, and technology. These are also available for students aged <7 years to >16 years.

At Go-Lab, per their website, you will find:

Online labs: These digital simulations often mimic laboratory situations where students can perform experiments digitally. The Go-Lab Ecosystem provides the most extensive collection of over 600 online labs, coming from resources from all over the world. You can access the labs through the main navigation on top of the page (“Labs”) and search labs using the filters on the right of the page.
Inquiry Learning Apps: These small digital tools guide students through the inquiry learning process and assist them at every step. For example, there are tools helping to formulate hypotheses, design experiments, visualize experiment data, draw conclusions, and many more. Learning analytics and collaborative learning tools are available as well. You can access the list of apps through the main navigation on the top of the page (“Apps”).
Inquiry Learning Spaces (ILSs): These digital spaces can be created with the help of the Go-Lab Ecosystem. Each ILS represents a structured learning scenario helping students discover a certain STEM topic through a process of inquiry learning. An ILS typically contains an online lab, several inquiry learning apps, and any learning content of your choice. You can find over 1,000 ready-to-use ILSs using the main navigation on top of the page (“Spaces”).

Many aspects of the Inquiry Learning Spaces are available under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

A screenshot of the Go-Lab website shows a sinking-floating experiment with the options to preview it or duplicate it. — Screenshot by author

2. Ark of Inquiry

The Ark of Inquiry seeks to promote scientific interest through inquiry learning. There are ample resources on their website, along with an hour introductory video:

Their website shares this goal:

The overall aim of the Ark of Inquiry project is to create a “new science classroom.” A science classroom that provides more challenging, authentic and higher-order learning experiences. One that gives students the chance to engage in scientific practices and tasks. Students use the discourse of science and work with scientific representations and tools.

Ark of Inquiry makes some materials available as both webpages and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files.

Materials for teachers (Get PDF)
Materials for teacher educators and researchers (Get PDF)
Materials for scientists (Get PDF)
Materials for parents (Get PDF)

Inquiry Learning

You can find several models for using inquiry learning in your classroom, but these websites (e.g., Go-Labs and Ark of Inquiry) offer two great starting points for leveraging technology to support inquiry learning.

Feature Image Source

Screenshot by author

March 15, 2023 0 comment

Content Areas Culturally Responsive English Language Arts Equity, Diversity, Inclusion ESL/ELL Social Studies

Five Resources for Indigenous Peoples and Native American Heritage

by Miguel Guhlin April 18, 2022

written by Miguel Guhlin

Looking for free lessons and activities for your students? Let’s explore five sources of content– including lessons, books, Google Earth, and podcasts. You can adapt these resources for several purposes. The focus of the resources is on Indigenous peoples and Native American Heritage. Rediscovering our history and exploring native perspectives can provide powerful insights. One place to start learning is the National Museum of the American Indian.

Note: In writing this, I realize how ignorant I am in spite of my efforts. I invite those of you who know more to share what amazing resources may be missing in the comments. Let’s learn together.

#1: Indigenous Peoples Day Lessons and Activities

Indigenous Peoples Day includes a rich collection of lessons. You can use the content here for Native American Heritage Month (month of November).

TechLearning.com offers a list of lessons and activities; here are two that caught my eye from their list:

a) Celebrating Indigenous Languages. Use Google Earth to explore how indigenous languages are being kept alive. When you visit the website, you will find a digital homage to at-risk languages. On the website, they share:

Indigenous communities around the globe are working to preserve and revitalize their languages. They teach them to future generations and share them with non-Indigenous speakers. You will find indigenous traditional greetings, favorite sayings and meaningful songs.

b) Indigenous Peoples’ Day Resources. This website offers lessons, books, and films. The goal is to share what happened when Christopher Columbus invaded indigenous lands. Lessons focus on:

Critical analysis of the textbook version of Columbus’ discovery
Role-playing a trial of Columbus’ genocide of the Tainos people in the late 15th century
Analysis of President Andrew Jackson’s speeches relevant to the Trail of Tears

Current events are also included, such as the Dakota Access Pipeline. These lessons offer a powerful counterpoint to dominant cultural perspectives. They serve as a great way to engage students in problem-based learning (PBL). What’s more, students can develop critical thinking skills as they analyze past policies.

You can also find author interviews and booklists via the Colorin Colorado website.

native american history — Screenshot by author

#2: Teaching for Change

As a native Panamanian and American of Swedish descent, I undertook a quick inventory. The inventory wasn’t of my possessions, but rather, my history and cultural roots. Even though I grew up in Central America, I know very little about its history. Many children who grow up in the United States should learn the history of Central America. They also may be curious, as I am, about their heritage.

Teaching Central America offers this point:

More than four million Central Americans live in the United States today. The lack of school resources on Central American heritage make its history invisible. Central America is too-often portrayed as a strip of land on a map connecting North and South America. There is a scarcity of literature in the school libraries.

To address the dearth of resources on history and literature, you can find more online now. Teachers can find “free downloadable lessons, bios, poetry, and prose.” You can test your knowledge of Central America with a short quiz (I scored 1 correct out of 5).

Did You Know?
Microsoft has an Indigenous theme for its Edge browser. You can find Google Chrome browser themes that have a Native American look to them appear online.

The website offers a few free books for students, including:

Wilfredo: Un Nino de El Salvador (45 pages, free)
Beauty and Eco-Relationships in the Natural World of Central America
Leaving Home: Socratic Dialogue with Art
Geography is History: Locate the Countries of Central America
Rediscovering America

Although these are for elementary level students, there are others for older students. This site offers some fantastic content.

#3: University of Connecticut

Need to deepen your knowledge of African American/Black and Puerto Rican/Latino history? Consider the resources the University of Connecticut offers as one source. Their online curriculum offers an African American/Black and Puerto Rican/Latino studies course. The content has five units featuring:

Early Beginnings
Blood and Beauty
Sweat
Resistance
Where Are We Now

Each unit is replete with readings, primary sources, historical fiction, films, and activities. The historiographies cover quite a bit of ground, including web and journal articles. You will find quotes like this one from Jayline Hernandez Gomez:

“Although I come from an uneducated family background, my parents are not the ones who failed to educate me,” Hernandez Gomez read during a three-minute public comment. “My history classes failed me.” (Source)

With websites like this one, you get a sense of the scope of what’s left to learn about history. One drawback to the site is that it relies on published books, so you may find yourself paying out of pocket.

#4: A Google Slides Template

Check out this Native American Heritage focused, Google Slides template. Developed by Google for Education, it offers a wide variety of slides and activities. For example, you will find links to make a copy of Google Slides templates for:

Native American Heritage Month Activity (requires Google account)
World Kindness Day Compliment Chain

These two templates are simple and meant for children to use. Students customize the compliment chain:

In addition, Google Arts and Culture has released a massive Indigenous Americas collection. Some of the things you will find in it include:

And there’s much more– like sixty-five years of Navajo history through music.

#5: The Clio

The Clio makes it easy to explore history. Among the walking and virtual tours, you will find a focus on Native American History. For example, you can find walking tours for the Crow, the Nez Perce War of 1877, and the Native American Museum. There are others, of course.

Having grown up reading Donald Clayton Porter’s historical fiction, which had an interesting take on early colonial conflict with First Nations, I found Clio’s content enlightening. The site provides some real history to explore in pictures, audio, and video.

Additional Resources

If you’re like me, you love to read and listen to others. Allow me to share a few sources of both.

No doubt, you’ve read your share of “white Indian” stories. That is, children adopted or stolen from American settlers, then raised by Indigenous peoples. One of the books in my school library included Conrad Richter’s “The Light in the Forest.” I still remember my negative reaction, but curiosity spurred me on. Since then, I found many better stories.

Learn more about the We Are Water Protectors

You may find this collection of kid-friendly books better fare than those two authors. It’s important to keep in mind that…

Only 1% of the children’s books published in the U.S. in 2016 featured Indigenous characters, and even fewer (1/4 of the 1% = 8 books total) were written by Indigenous authors. (source)

Explore more titles via Strong Nations, an indigenous book publisher and seller. Debbie Reese shares more books of interest. You may gain a deeper appreciation for cultures lost and at-risk, as well as why they became so.

Finally, listen to these three podcasts for children:

Intended for younger children, they have a common goal of celebrating indigenous stories. Educators may also find this Kidlit These Days episode of interest, Episode 13: An Indigenous Peoples’ History.

Deepen Your Awareness of History

Don’t be afraid to explore and deepen your knowledge. There’s so much to learn and share about Indigenous peoples and Native Americans. Why not start with this collection of children’s books?

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Screenshot by author

April 18, 2022 0 comment

Good Teaching

Make It Relevant: The Collaborator ISTE Standard

by Miguel Guhlin May 7, 2020

written by Miguel Guhlin

In classrooms today, the goal remains learning how to solve problems together. Authentic learning often involves learners in joint problem solving. We work together towards a goal, each of us knowing what part we play to resolve the issue(s). How do you do set educators up for success in this endeavor? In this blog entry, we’ll explore several approaches. Before we do that, let’s step back and ask ourselves, What is authentic learning?

ISTE Standards for Educators: Collaborator

To better understand what authentic learning is, let’s take a look at it through the lens of the ISTE Standards, a way to do three things:

Improve practice
Discover and share resources and ideas
Solve problems

When you look at the four indicators, you realize that the last action is quite important to the standard. Here are the four indicators:

4a: Dedicate planning time to collaborate with colleagues to create authentic learning experiences that leverage technology.

4b: Collaborate and co-learn with students to discover and use new digital resources and diagnose and troubleshoot technology issues.

4c: Use collaborative tools to expand students’ authentic, real-world learning experiences by engaging virtually with experts, teams and students, locally and globally.

4d: Demonstrate cultural competency when communicating with students, parents and colleagues and interact with them as co-collaborators in student learning.

As you can see, two of the indicators refer to “authentic learning experiences.” Each enjoys the benefit of real-world problem-solving. When you unpack the vocabulary, you see that each indicator expands on the other:

Authentic learning (4a): Activities based on student’s real world experiences or current issues. These use real data and seek to solve real-life problems.
Authentic, real-world learning experiences (4c). This involves solving local and global real world problems. It could involve design thinking as well.

This presents tremendous opportunities for situating student learning in real-world problem-solving scenarios. How do you do that? Let’s review the steps that lead to authentic learning experiences with technology.

Step #1: Engage with a Real-World Problem

“Fall in love with the problem, not the solution,” says Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots, X. Many of us know that real-world problems, a la 5E Model’s Engage stage, help to focus learners. The problem engages students when it is relevant to them. Let’s review what a real-world problem should look like:

The PBL challenge is one that captures students’ attention. It stimulates their thinking, and assists them in accessing prior knowledge. (Source: 5E Model + Technology)

Note the importance of prior knowledge. (We’ll explore prior knowledge in Step #2 due to its importance.) In crafting a real-world problem, I would be quick to rely on relevant life issues and challenges.

A real-world problem must engage students in the inquiry process. You can present news or troubling information from a primary source. Students can derive a problem from that information. Or you as the teacher can craft a problem narrative/engagement scenario. You can show a video, or resource, that engages students. The next step is critical because it engages students in identifying what they don’t know. One way to do this is to rely on a concept map about the following areas:

What do I know?
What do I need to know?
What questions do I have about what I know or don’t know?

This assists students in seeing the bigger picture. It’s not enough to depend on this. You, as the teacher, as well as experts on the problem, must step in.

Step #2: Build Background Knowledge

A fascinating tidbit about problem-based learning (PBL): When you allow students to do all the work of knowledge gathering, it’s not very effective. In fact, Dr. John Hattie reports it has an effect size of 0.35. This is less than the 0.40 hinge point for a normal year’s growth in a classroom. This makes all the work for PBL, “Meh, not worth it.” But wait; before you give up, keep reading.

Note how Quadrant D learning is focused on real-world, unpredictable situations. That is where problem-solving teaching must take students. But they can only go AFTER they have learned content and skills needed to solve it.

You can use several strategies to speed up student growth in a particular area. That is, to build prior knowledge, you can use strategies proven to work. When you do this, and then introduce students, PBL’s effect size increases. I like to think of PBL introduced at surface learning stage as a beginning Pokemon. Use it too soon, students fail. Use it after evolving, you get powerful results.

Image Source: YA Web Design

If you spend some time building knowledge capacity in your students, PBL evolves. It evolves from PBL to a more effective, transfer learning strategy. The evolved PBL strategy is problem-solving teaching. This strategy enjoys a respectable 0.68 effect size.

This evolved PBL appears after you have introduced content (a.k.a. surface learning). It appears after deep learning, when students have gone beyond knowledge conceptualization. It’s only when students are ready to engage in transfer learning that PBL works.

The Visible Learning Meta X database defines it in this way:

Problem-solving involves learning to solve a problem that one does not already know how to solve. It can also involve teaching specific, subject-area focused strategies for attempting to solve such problems.

As you can see, this is like ISTE’s expectation in the Collaboration standard. The focus is on real-world problems, authentic learning, and skill-building.

Mapping Learning Growth via Reflection

You must give students the opportunity to build up background knowledge. How do you do that? Support your students in making their own concept map. They can begin with questions, then track their growing understanding. This means that their concept map will change over time. It’s not a “make one and then forget it” situation.

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You might ask students, “What would you add to or how would you change your map?” Ask them to revise their concept map as part of their reflection time. To build background knowledge, rely on one of the surface learning strategies. Need some ideas of how to get started? Check this list.

See the complete chart of surface, deep, and transfer strategies online.

Step #3: Present the Problem

The key concept behind the problem-solving teaching strategy is that of novelty, presenting students with a problem they have not encountered before. It is novel, requiring them to apply their newfound knowledge and skills. In a skill-building scenario, it could be to use design thinking process. Or encouraging students to apply their knowledge of an engineering design process. Students can begin to explore the problem from various stakeholder roles. One way to focus them on solution development is to ask, “What will success look like?” Have them put the criteria they use for success into a rubric.

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As you embark on a PBL unit, align it to the ISTE Standards for Educators’ Collaborator aspect. It will focus your work on authentic learning and real-world problem-solving. What’s more, make sure that you use surface learning strategies first. These will build students’ background knowledge. Then, they can apply their knowledge to a new problem. In this way, you can accelerate student growth.

May 7, 2020 1 comment

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