by Amy Brennan

On Thursday, March 2, 2017 #G2Great welcomed Starr Sackstein and Connie Hamilton to a conversation around homework. While we had several questions to generate our conversation I can’t help but feel that some questions beg for us to linger longer. This blog is just the place to linger longer and dig a little deeper into such an important topic. Be sure to check out their book, Hacking Homework: 10 Strategies That Inspire Learning Outside the Classroom.

What does the research say and why is everyone talking about it?

John Hattie’s research about homework has been the evidence that many people quote when saying that there is “no research to support homework having an impact on learning.” It is in very broad terms that the research is quoted and does not differentiate the types of homework that Hattie is referring to. He breaks this down by the nature of the homework and then the effect size, while correlated to the grade level is really more connected to the type of homework that is typically assigned to students at each level.  

*Fisher, Frey, Hattie Visible Learning for Literacy 2016

In considering this research, reading independently for homework and specifically reading at their independent reading level would have a 0.55 effect size. The effect size is the magnitude of a specific effect and Hattie found that the “hinge point” of higher than 0.40 had a positive impact on learning.  

Rethinking the type of homework that we assign to students was a big idea that came from our guest hosts, Starr and Connie. They make a point that worksheets,spelling lists and hours of math problems are not great academic interventions. Starr and Connie make the case that just because homework always looked this way does not mean that it has to be this way or that it is the best way. Starr and Connie share such timely “hacks” to traditional homework that will inspire your students to learn. During the chat some primary beliefs around homework developed. Ideas related to purpose, relevance, flexibility and the home-school connection were shared during the chat and are worthy of further reflection and conversation. These ideas will lead us to explore ways to “hack homework.”

Purpose and relevance

Is homework relevant? This was a question that generated responses that spoke to the importance of considering the purpose when assigning homework. Just like anything else, learners need to understand the purpose behind something before they are going to engage in and learn from it. Acknowledging that there is a real purpose behind a specific homework assignment gives students reason to complete it and makes the time spent on the homework valuable. Once the purpose has been established we also need to consider the relevance of a particular homework assignment.

Let’s see how this looks with an example:

I believe independent reading is a valuable homework assignment. When assigning independent reading I want to be very clear in the purpose of reading independently as homework. There are a variety of purposes for independent reading and they need to be expressed and demonstrated to students. Ultimately it is to become a better reader but the purpose needs to also be relevant to our students.

Purpose and relevance: The purpose behind reading for homework each night is to become proficient, lifelong readers and above all thinkers. Reading impacts all aspects of our lives personally, socially and professionally. It improves the quality of our lives. We become better citizens when we read and think critically and share our ideas with others to make the world better. This is what we want for our students. We know that children learn to read by reading and they need to read a lot in school and outside of school in order to accelerate their reading proficiency. Homework needs to be meaningful and relevant to the student and their learning. Independent reading of self-selected books means that homework is purposeful and relevant.   

Flexibility

Flexibility in assigning homework is necessary for so many reasons. First, as teachers we work with little humans, and little humans well, they are just as complex as the big ones like us and that requires flexibility. We are flexible by providing learning opportunities that best meet our students’  needs and accentuates their strengths in order to accelerate learning. One size fits all or rigid rules and consequences for homework does not provide the flexibility required for our best learning to happen!

The Home-School Connection

When homework is meaningful, purposeful and relevant it can be a positive experience. When we develop a vision around homework and share it with our families in very clear ways that are purposeful and relevant it will strengthen the connection and overall support improving student learning. Providing flexibility to account for individual and family differences will also help to build the connection between a student’s home and school. Ultimately, the home-school connection will improve when we look at homework truly as a way to improve and inspire student learning.

Homework is a topic that warrants our attention. We are grateful to Starr and Connie for helping us reflect on these important ideas.

Links for Starr Sackstein and Connie Hamilton

Starr Sackstein  twitter – @MsSackstein

mssackstein@gmail.com

Starr Sackstein Books https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=starr+sackstein

Hacking Homework Page with books:

http://hacklearning.org/hacking-homework-10-strategies-inspire-learning-outside-classroom/

Education Week, Teacher at “Work in Progress” http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/work_in_progress/

2016 TEDxTalk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_61kL5jeKqM

Connie Hamilton, ED.S.

Twitter: @conniehamilton

website: www.conniehamilton.org

www.hackinghomework.com

Hacking Homework: Favorite Quotes, Tips, Advice from the Introduction and Hacks 1-4 by Colleen Noffsinger.

https://literacylovinggals.blogspot.com/2016/12/hacking-homework-favorite-quotes-tips.html

Hacking Homework (Part 2): Favorite Quotes, Tips, Advice from the Introduction and Hacks 5-10

https://literacylovinggals.blogspot.com/2017/01/hacking-homework-part-2-favorite-quotes.html

How to Eliminate Both Homework and Grades at the Same Time

http://hacklearning.org/hwgrades/

by Amy Brennan

On February 9, 2017 #G2Great was honored to have two very special guest hosts, Eden and Ella.  

Like Adele, Bono, Fergie, Jewel, Lorde, Pink, Rhianna and Shakira these rock stars who were our special guest hosts only need one name – Eden and Ella. These two guest hosts symbolize all that #G2Great stands for; keeping our students at the center. Eden and Ella are the rockstars of education, they represent the students we all are here to serve. These rocks stars are the reason we are educators and the reason we continue to spread our message; the vision that led us to create our blog Literacy Lenses.

“We envision forging new paths to our best selves with dedicated others standing beside us, shouting words from the highest peaks that help us as we pave the way forward – one step at a time.”

– Literacy Lenses

This dedicated group on our mountaintop includes students, we invite them to stand beside us, learn beside and become a collective force in the learning landscape of education.

Eden and Ella created #kidsedchatnd when they were in fourth grade, they found an innovative way to create a space for kids where they could share and grow ideas together. That collaborative thinking is what we often refer to at #G2Great  as thinking in the company of others. It is just what students and adults need to do to engage in the level of thinking and learning we need to be successful, responsible, well-informed and critical thinking citizens in a global community. In spaces like this amazing ideas are born. These are the places where thinkers, often with different perspectives can come together, share ideas, develop new ideas and nurture those ideas as they grow into something amazing.

Plan

The short and long term planning that goes into moderating a Twitter chat involve skills that many adults work towards improving, yet these girls – they are doing it! Eden and Ella are driven and they thrive when working behind- the-scenes because they have seen the success that comes from creating a space for kids to share ideas and learn.  You can see their energy and passion in the tweets below!  

Experience

In order to learn, a learner needs to experience something. Passive learning just does not stick for most learners. It could be a shared experience in the class that is set up or some real world scenarios where students experience something and collaborate and problem solve to figure it out. Writing for an authentic audience with real world purpose is another way to create an experience for learner.  Learners need context and this is a great way to begin to move across progressions in learning.

Responsibility

As educators, we have a responsibility to teach students how to use digital platforms and social media responsibly. We can no longer make excuses and avoid social media, it is embedded throughout our lives and especially prominent in the lives of kids. If we do not teach students how to become responsible digital citizens and how to use social media they will likely learn it from somewhere else and they may not have opportunities to learn how to be responsible in using social media. Students need appropriate role models to learn from as it relates to the digital world. Teachers have opportunities to teach students how to write and share their ideas using social media with an authentic audience in the real world.

Perspective

When teachers and students share ideas they each bring their own perspective to the discussion. This reciprocal sharing of ideas through discourse provides opportunities for students to learn a very important skill for the real world. Students learn how not only speak and articulate their ideas, but also how to listen to other voices, particularly when they might be different.  The potential for learning when students and teachers engage in this sort of idea generating discourse is something we should want for all students. This provides that students engage and learn to develop complex ideas while they speak, listen, read and write.  

Eden and Ella showed us real-world opportunities that explore a new dimension in the Twitterverse that we have really not explored before. We have had students on the #G2Great chat, however creating a shared Twitterchat on February 9th provided us with a lens to see how Eden and Ella have engaged in their own chat and created a platform for students to share their ideas. We learned from Eden and Ella about how planning, experience, responsibility, and perspective all impact student learning in some way. Through the tweets, but also through their process in creating and moderating #Kidschatnd we learned that these four ideas impact student learning and their twitter chat is a model for how students learn.

A few points that we learned from Eden and Ella

Plan: We learned that a plan for learning is important. Eden and Ella plan and complete the behind the scenes work to get their ideas to #Kidsedchatnd.

Experience: We learned that it is important that as students are learning that they are engaged in an experience that helps to create a context for the learning. Eden and Ella are creating an experience through the planning and the chat time that enhances their learning.

Responsibility: We learned that when learners take responsibility for their learning amazing things (#Kidsedchatnd) can happen! Eden and Ella are a model of students taking responsibility for their learning.

Perspective: We learned that it is important for students and teachers to share ideas because when we share ideas, especially with people who have a different perspective, our ideas only get better! Eden and Ella showed us that when kids and adults get together to talk serious about learning, the kids are teaching us!

#G2Great is grateful for the collaboration with Eden and Ella as well as their parents, teachers, and principal. We look forward to future collaborations and know that Eden and Ella will be in our minds, with each and every decision we make, because students have to remain at the center. We will continue to invite Eden and Ella and all students to stand beside us, learn beside and become a collective force in the learning landscape of education.

Be sure as you keep students at the center to check in with Eden and Ella at #kidsedchatnd and follow them on Twitter @kidsedchatnd

By Amy Brennan

On January 19, 2017 #G2Great welcomed Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan( @ClareandTammy ). We learned alongside our #G2Great community about Assessment in Perspective and we discussed topics related to their book by the same title. In the book, Clare and Tammy begin the preface with a quote from Maya Angelou that really speaks to perspective around assessment and how important the human factor is when interpreting data.

    Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning. –Maya Angelou        

Purpose

Understanding the purpose behind anything that we are engaged in is critical for success. Assessment is no different — all stakeholders, teachers, parents and most of all our students should know why we are engaging in a particular assessment.  When the purpose isn’t known to those involved in the assessing, the data is no longer reliable. When we consider the purpose we also have to consider that there many factors that go into the performance a child has on a particular assessment. Think about physical and mental factors that can interfere with a test sleep, diet and mood can greatly alter one’s performance. Home and school factors can also impact performance, but if the stakeholders, teachers, students and parents know the purpose of the assessment Collectively they can support the whole child by ensuring that the optimal conditions are present when a child is assessed, but this can only happen if there is an understanding and a shared value in the purpose.  

“If we want true, meaningful and authentic data — we must start with the purpose.”

– Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan

Meaning

If data is to be viewed with meaning, those participating in this assessment must value and see the meaningfulness in the data. In their book, Tammy and Clare title the first chapter, “Moving Beyond the Numbers: Finding the Stories of Our Readers.” If that chapter title alone does not draw you into this book I am sure the tweets from this chat will! They quote Lucy Calkins in this chapter from The Nuts and Bolts of Teaching Writing (2003), “Assessment is the thinking teacher’s mind work. The intelligence that guides our every moment as a teacher. It is through this mind work –– collecting data, asking questions, digging deeper, talking with colleagues, and putting the pieces of information together –– that we can truly understand our readers and find their stories.”  

We, as educators need to push beyond the numbers and listen to the stories of our students. In a time when assessment and data can be so overwhelming to us, it is comforting to see so many educators who see beyond the numbers. They not only see the name, they see the face, they hear the voice and they hold the hand of our precious learners as they grow because we are assessing with a purpose and they are holding tight to meaningful data.

    “We cannot afford to lose these stories.”

– Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan

Authenticity

Assessments must be authentic. This means that assessment and instruction are connected. Instruction cannot be without assessment and assessment without instruction, they are two halves of the same whole. If we expect assessment to affect instruction it must be authentic. It should be connected to the learning that is actually happening in the classroom. The gradual release of responsibility model that we use in our reading and writing minilessons offers us authentic opportunities to observe our students in the act of learning, we can see how they apply the new learning. At first with a partner and then alone. These authentic assessment opportunities allow students to engage in classroom discussion, provide opportunities for teacher clarity and feedback while generating an authentic formative assessment while students are in the act of learning. If we look to John Hattie’s research we can see that these instructional practices have a significant effect size on learning and they are authentic!

During the chat, so many educators voiced these ideas throughout the chat. As Cathy Mere pointed out, “Assessment is the arrow that keeps us moving forward.” It is important for us to remember that the arrow has to have a purpose or direction and be meaningful and authentic in order to stay its course and move forward.

If you want to learn more about Clare and Tammy’s perspective, visit http://assessmentinperspective.com and buy a copy of their book Assessment in Perspective from Stenhouse Publishers!  

Thank you to Clare and Tammy for chatting with us! Thank you to Stenhouse Publishers for providing books that lucky chat participants were able to win in our raffle!  Thank you to our #G2Great PLN for joining us each and every week as we chat, think and learn together!  It is always better in your company!

Click here for the Storify archive of this chat!