How is it different in March?

Winter returned last night. It wasn't too bad here but around Michigan the temperatures fell (along with some significant snow in the southeast part of the state). The reaction on Twitter and Facebook made me wonder how we go from having fun playing in the snow

to wanting to commit snowman murder in less than three months. 

It's probably related to perspective. When the snow is fresh and new, it's easy to get excited about the change in season. But after a few months of bundling up and shoveling snow, we can't wait for warmer weather.

Unfortunately, complaining about the weather does nothing but put me in a bad mood. So we try to make the best of it by staying active

Kathy skiing from our cabin in the UP

and exploring new places created by the very cold we wish would go away.

Eben Ice Caves

What does this have to do with education? I think the same thing happens in a lot of our classes. While there is initial excitement about a new school year, students and teachers quickly get stuck in a rut of doing the same thing day-after-day. I once heard Debbie Miller say (in regards to the Gradual Release of Responsibility), "If you're doing the same thing in February and March that you were doing in September and October, you're doing it wrong." As teachers, we need to find ways to keep everyone active and explore new ideas and making the best of it.

Before Spring Break, I asked my students what was working and what they wanted me to change. I used their suggestions to make adjustments to the upcoming unit. They had some really good ideas about combining some assignments and addressing new areas. One group wants cookies.

Nice try.

Is it a performance or playing?

We spent much of our break between semesters attending concerts by Michigan musicians (Joshua Davis, Max and Ruth, Seth and May, and Starlight Six). As often happens, I began to consider how what I observed during these concerts might apply to teaching. This was especially true when we got to see Joshua Davis at two different venues on December 13th. The first was at a theater in Frankfort, Michigan showing a movie to which Joshua contributed. Later, at an after party, he played in a pub across the Betsie River in Elberta.

At the theater, Joshua performed before the movie while photos from his trip played on the screen behind him. He shared a bit about the project and a few songs that had resulted from the experience. I saw this as a performance because he had limited time to share a planned set of his "best material" in a polished fashion to an audience he could barely see beyond the first few rows. 

His playing at the pub was much different. Joshua was set up on a "stage" separated from the audience by a pathway that many of the patrons used to get from the bar area to the bathrooms. During his set, he joked with the people as they passed by and interacted with the audience. We yelled out requests and he obliged. Furthermore, it was clear that he was trying out some new approaches to familiar songs. I call this playing because it was more relaxed and playful than his earlier performance.

As I reflected on the differences between these two shows, I realized that I need to be better about distinguishing between performing and playing in my practice. There is a place for both in teaching, but I am afraid I have not always made an intentional choice about the approach I will use during a lesson. When there is limited time, little opportunity to interact with the audience, and a need to share my best, most polished material, then a performance might be the way to go. Otherwise (and if I am honest, most times), I would be wise to be more playful in my teaching - trying out new things, seeing how the audience responds, and making the necessary adjustments.

And before too long, maybe I can schedule an "open-mic lesson." Of course, there will need to be intentional efforts to turn over to the audience the responsibility of making music. Still, it would be interesting to hear how they might interpret the music and make it their own. 

What can we learn from books/movies about teaching?

While it probably does not happen often enough to be considered a trend, I have noticed that many educators on Twitter are using fictional stories to justify what they see as effective teaching. I have seen arguments that Obi-Wan Kenobi's work with Luke in Star Wars suggests that lecture is not all bad. Others point to Mr. Miyagi's teaching in The Karate Kid as evidence that teachers do not need to make their intentions explicit to be effective. Even I have succumbed to the temptation by holding up Tom Sawyer as an example of the way I would like to teach.

I understand why we do it. 140 characters makes it difficult to state our position and defend it all in a single tweet. Consequently, we rely on parts of familiar stories that transmit a shared understanding of our perspective. When I brought up Tom Sawyer, I trusted that people would remember the passage about Tom being sentenced to whitewash Aunt Polly's fence. I am old enough that, although I read the original story, the picture that comes to mind is from the 1973 movie starring Johnny Whitaker.

The problem is that these characters are responding to Tom's approach because that's how it was written not as empirical evidence of my point. Sure, the story resonates with us because it represents some experience or idea that we are familiar with (in my case, the gradual release of responsibility) but it is important to remember that it is fiction not reality. The progression from modeling to mentoring to monitoring will not be as fast as Tom experienced. To suggest otherwise might lead a teacher trying this approach to believe that such a transition will be quick and easy; this is not the case, which could lead to the teacher to experience frustration when it actually takes time and is messy.

I have said it before, teaching is hard. It is understandable that we might try to simplify it by using familiar stories as some sort of allegory. In fact, I cannot say with certainty that I will not use this approach in the future. What I will try to do is ensure that I encourage a great deal of critical thinking around how the fiction represents some reality of education and where it oversimplifies the teaching and learning process. That is my commitment to making the complexities of teaching explicit.

What did you see/hear?

Last week, I attended the Michigan Reading Association's Annual Conference where I went to a session lead by Doug Fisher. He was presenting on Response to Intervention from a gradual release of responsibility perspective. It was the gradual release model that I was most interested in - especially since his book with Nancy Frey presents a slightly different version of this approach than the one I use. But I will leave that discussion for a later post. Today, I want to share my current thinking about what makes for an effective demonstration lesson (what Doug labels Purpose & Modeling).

From Doug Fisher's Michigan Reading Association Presentation

The demonstration I am sharing comes from a workshop for my Teaching and Learning Middle Grades Mathematics [TLMGM] course (a combination content and methods course that our secondary majors take prior to student teaching). This workshop focuses on comprehending the purpose behind a lesson that a teacher might encounter in an unfamiliar curriculum. Many of our student teachers find themselves using curricula that typically require a significant amount of professional development. Because our student teachers have not had this support, they sometime struggle to implement the lessons effectively. Therefore, I hope to share an approach I might use to better understand the rationale behind a lesson.

I used the ShowMe App to take a picture of a number string from a lesson found in the Context for Learning Mathematics series and then added my thinking. ShowMe records both my whiteboard annotations and voice to create a video that I can share with others.

A key piece to any demonstration is the debriefing: What did you see and what did you hear? This reflects Cambourne's perspective on who is ultimately responsible for learning: "Learners need to make their own decisions about when, how, and what 'bits' of information to learn in any learning task." By asking the learners what bits of information they attended to during the demonstration, the teacher is gathering important data that can inform future instruction (formative assessment). If the observers did not attend to something important presented in the demonstration, the teacher can highlight the missing points by saying, "I noticed that I was also..." The resulting list provides an anchor chart that learners can refer back to as they take more responsibility for employing the approach.

After I shared this demonstration with my learners in TLMGM, they noticed that I was trying to understand the string by:

• making connections between the expressions;
• considering different representations that might further my understanding;
• recognizing that computing the answers might help but wasn't enough;
• thinking about ways to put the expressions into a context; and
• analyzing my options before jumping into any plan.

Satisfied that they had attended to the major points of the demonstration, I provided them with further resources related to the Ratio Table unit and had them work collaboratively. They tried to look at the strings from the various angles in order to understand the purpose of the lessons.

During the workshop's reflection, I provided the opportunity for them to share what they had uncovered through Twitter. This provided everyone who wanted to contribute a voice and me with another artifact that I could use for formative assessment. Here is a sample of the discussion:

UPDATE 3/21/12
Reflecting back on this post, I have come to realize that if I were going to embrace the idea of "flipping" my class, this is what it would look like. I would use ShowMe to create demonstration lessons and have my learners watch them. When they finished, I would ask them to Tweet those things that they noticed in order to assess what they paid attention to and create an anchor chart for the class.

I know that my learners (college students) may differ from your's if you teach in a K12 school. But what do you think? Would this work for you?

When do we stop chewing their food?

The birds have found the feeder. We moved it and a suet holder closer to the house this winter since the trees that used to shelter them were cut down over the summer. I was afraid that their proximity to the house might frighten the birds, but it has not been a problem. In fact, it has made it easier to watch the birds as they feed.

During the spring and summer, I watched as the adult birds fed the babies. The adults would grab food from the feeder and place it in the mouths of the babies waiting on nearby branches. I do not anticipate seeing much of this behavior over the winter. I could be wrong, but I think the birds that visit our feeder and suet cakes have outgrown the need to be beak-fed.

When does this happen in education? In other words: when do we quit feeding learners information and expect them to fend for themselves? This came up this past week as I talked with university colleagues about student evaluations. We have all had comments that our students want more lecture because that is how they "learn" best. I make up that these comments are from students who have come to expect that the teacher's role is to gather and chew up educational information for students to consume. Is that too harsh?

For the sake of completing this post, let us assume that this learned helplessness is indeed the problem. What can we do about it? This is where I try to apply the Teaching-Learning Cycle and the Gradual Release of Responsibility. The Teaching-Learning Cycle provides a framework where I can identify the information and the processes learners need to make it on their own, monitor learners' progress toward these goals, and plan and implement appropriate supports. The Gradual Release of Responsibility represents an instructional approach which helps learners to "fend for themselves" through a series of lessons that begin with demonstrations, move to collaboration, and eventually result in independent practice.

I am fortunate that my colleague, who teaches the prerequisite course for the one I am teaching now, uses these frameworks in his practice. Even after only a few days I have seen a difference in my learners. Not everyone of these learners had John's section, but those who did are able to share with the rest what is expected of them in and out of class. I get the feeling that there will be a lot less gathering and chewing on my part this semester. And for that, I am grateful.

Who controls the volume?

For that special date 11-11-11, NPR's All Songs Considered did a podcast based on the this clip from This is Spinal Tap:

No surprise - my thoughts went to education. I wondered about the ways I try to turn my teaching volume up to eleven. There are certainly times in my classroom where I want to REALLY impress upon my learners the importance of what we are exploring. While this might result in literally turning up the volume, it is more likely to manifest itself in elaborate planning and over-the-top presentation. It might get the learners' attention, and maybe even their interest, but this line of thinking seems too self-centered to be sustainable.

The podcast was really about the songs that listeners want to turn up to eleven, though. This was evident in the following exchange:

Bob Bollen: "I think most people, when they think of 'cranking up', they think of pop music. They think of turning up the radio that they’re listening to when that song comes on." 

Jacob Ganz: "Yeah, that’s the instinct. You’re listening to the radio and something comes on and you either reach to change the channel or you reach to crank it."

BB: "It was the original 'like' button. Only there was no feedback. If the station could have gotten that information that you turned the dial up …"

In my way of thinking, the listener represents the learners in my classroom. While I certainly have wished that I could receive immediate feedback on how engaged learners were in the lesson, when it is put this way I am uneasy. It too closely resembles a consumer approach to education - find out what they want and then give them more of it. This seems representative of some of the student-centered approaches that I find unsustainable.

Instead, I would like to have learners be more reflective about what they like or don't like about a lesson. Here is where the analogy breaks down because listeners do not need to connect with every song, but I want learners to be prepared to engage with every lesson. This is a metacognitive act that will allow them to participate more fully in boring lessons that they might otherwise tune out.

I still want to develop lessons that showcase my enthusiasm for the topics being addressed. Enthusiasm can be contagious. As the course goes on, however, I need to be ready to gradually release responsibility to the learners. They must find ways to connect to the learning regardless of their level of interest. After all, learners ultimately control the volume of what they want to hear. I just want to help them to make critical and sustainable choices.

Whose problem is it?

"Education systems, teachers, school districts all over the world are going crazy about problem-based learning - nothing like a good problem to solve. But they are looking at the wrong bit of it. The thing we're neglecting is to find a generation of problem finders."

The above quote comes early in Ewan McIntosh's talk at TEDxLondon. This really connects with my goal to foster sustainable learning. Here is the entire talk (it is well worth the eight minutes):

I want learners to come up with their own problems - to be able to answer, "Now what?" for themselves. Most times when I try to implement a problem finding curriculum, however, two issues interfere: trust and control. You see, I know what they need to know because I know what I learned and how it has helped me. How can I be sure learners will follow the correct path, find the right problems, if I do not lead them either explicitly or implicitly?

Here is a good example. Over the winter holiday break, I went on a hike through a state managed forest. Along the trail were a variety of signs describing interesting facts about the trees and forest management. The sign below was of particular interest to me.

I thought it had a lot of potential for use in a course on teaching and learning middle school mathematics that I am scheduled to lead this semester. It would provide a great context for the geometry section as I asked my learners to make Biltmore and Merritt Rule Sticks using the information provided. The problem was perfect, but as Ewan points out, it was also mine.

Given my interest in sustainable learning, I would be better off owning the problem myself and using it as a demonstration. It would offer an opportunity for thinking aloud about identifying problems in contexts that interest me - the first step in the gradual release of responsibility. Then, with my support, the learners could begin to find their own problems in whatever math content we must address. By the end of the course, hopefully, the learners could find problems for themselves.

With awareness and effort, I have gotten better at letting my learners lead the way. Every success allows me to trust them a little bit more and give up trying to control the curriculum. Maybe 2012 will be the year I learn to really let go.

Now what? Part I

Learners who lose the ability to make decisions are disempowered.

Brain Cambourne

This quote comes from Cambourne's theory of learning as it relates to responsibility. I see this "disempowerment" in the secondary math classes that I observe and the college courses that I teach. Students are constantly waiting for someone else, usually the teacher, to tell them what to do. The time when this is most evident is when a student finishes an assigned task and sits back waiting for the teacher to answer the question, "Now what?"

Disempowerment has tremendous consequences. It removes from the student the responsibility to be a self-directed learner. Once a task is complete, they fail to consider what might come next which results in a loss of cognitive momentum - disengagement. Their need to be directed by others to explore beyond the assigned task is unsustainable. What happens when a teacher is not available to tell them what comes next? They sit and wait.

This is why I spend a great deal of time in my classes, especially those populated with teachers-in-training, encouraging them to ask the "Now what?" question to themselves and not wait for me to tell them what comes next. Granted, this is not easy at first since it runs counter to years of training, but with time I have found that I can gradually release the responsibility of identifying extensions to my learners. It usually starts with me explicitly identifying the disempowerment issue and modeling what self-directed learners might do with extra time on their hands. After modeling this behavior multiple times, I share with my learners the responsibility of coming up with ways to maintain our momentum. My goal is that eventually learners will develop their own approach to extending their learning and thus empowering themselves.

An example of sharing this responsibility comes from a probability and statistics course I have taught for preservice K-8 math teachers. The activity is based on an article from Ann Lawrence, "From The Giver to Twenty-One Balloons: Explorations with Probability." I like this article because it models several possible extensions students might consider to further their learning. For example, after working on several probability problems related to The Giver, the middle school students in the article are asked to write their own problems given the story's context. Here are the results of this extension:

Novice teachers are sometimes hesitant to turn over this responsibility of generating problems to students because they feel unprepared to deal with what might be messy stories. Therefore, I ask my preservice teachers to look at Mark's story and consider possible solution methods and then what comes next. With practice, these future teachers can become more adept at dealing with unpredictable situations. Also, I explicitly state that their "Now what?" question can focus on either pedagogy (responding to Mark) or content (exploring the math) - it's up to them. Empowerment!

Before I share the typical results, I want to provide you the opportunity to explore Mark's problem. A chance to ask and answer your own "Now what?" question. I hope you will share your learning in the comments.

Who's doing the work?

I am in the process of planning a course for GVSU's experimental program involving W. K. Kellogg Foundation - Woodrow Wilson Michigan Teaching Fellows. The course is called Facilitating Learning Environments. One of the assigned texts is Harry Wong's The First Days of School.


I received a signed copy of this book from my mother early in my teaching career and read it over a summer. I still remember the impact the following passage had on my career:

But have you ever noticed what happens at 3 o'clock when the students leave? "Yea, yea, yea!" Why are they so full of energy? Because they have been sitting in school all day doing nothing while the teacher is doing all the work.

The person who does the work is the only one doing any learning! (page 205)

One way I related to this passage was my habit of taking students' pencils when they encountered a problem. There, I admitted it. I was a serial pencil grabber. A student would raise his or her hand and say, "I don't get it." Like a trained dog, I would grab the pencil, do the work, and ask if they got it now. After the obligatory nod by the student, I would walk away feeling like I was the best teacher in the world. Actually, I was psuedoteaching but I was unaware of it until I began to reflect on who was doing the work.

I vowed that I would never grab another pencil. When circling the classroom, I would have my hands in my pockets or clasped behind my back in order to resist the urge to do the students' work for them. I got better at guiding them through problems using questions.

Last year, I shared this story with a pair of teacher assistants after observing them grab students' pencils. They made a good point that these students were completely lost and required a demonstration not merely guidance. (The gradual release of responsibility strikes again.) We discussed how this might look.

The demonstration would start with the teacher saying, "Watch what I do, listen to what I say, and keep a record of it so we can talk about it later." Next, the teacher would model solving the problem, using his or her own pencil, being sure to think aloud while working through the process. Once the problem was solved, the teacher would ask the learner for a recount of the process. This could serve as an assessment - did the learner attend to the important details of the process? If the learner was ready, the teacher would ask the learner to apply the process to another problem as the teacher now served as a guide. If all went well, the teacher would move on taking the work done during the demonstration. After all, it was the teacher's not the learner's work.

I appreciated that these teacher assistants were able to question my "wisdom" (and authority) regarding this issue. It reminds me that I have a lot to learn from my learners - as long as I am willing to let them do the work.

What's GRR?

Yesterday afternoon, I engaged in a Twitter discussion about the Gradual Release of Responsibility. Because of the confines of the medium (maximum of 140 characters in its pure form), we quickly condensed the phrase to GRR. This resulted in the following tweet between John and Frank: 

I am a nosy Tweeter so I butted in and shared this video on GRR by Jeffrey Wilhelm:

My first introduction to this teaching and learning model was at a workshop on content literacy put on by The Learning Network. Margaret Mooney was the keynoter and she described the model using a figure similar to the one shown to the right. I was resistant because the leftmost stages reminded me too much of lecturing - a method I had decided was ineffective when it came to constructing understanding. I was what my wife calls a "constructivist gone wild."


Then I read about GRR in Debbie Miller's book, Reading with Meaning. She writes:

Chances are that if you think back to a time when you learned how to do something new, the gradual release of responsibility model (Pearson and Gallagher 1983) comes into play. Maybe you learned how to snowboard, canoe, play golf, or drive a car. If you watched somebody do it first, practiced under that person's watchful eye, listened to his or her feedback, and then one fine day went off and did it by yourself, adding your own special twist to it in the process, you know what this model is all about. (p. 10)

I was not completely convinced, but I was beginning to see the appeal of this more natural approach to teaching and learning.


Finally, I watched a first-grade teacher use GRR during a series of reading comprehension lessons. She modeled for me how she used formative assessments to evaluate where learners were in the model and how that informed the level of support she needed to offer during instruction. This demonstration helped me to see GRR as a framework that supports teacher decision-making during lessons focusing on processes. It has been an essential framework in my teaching ever since.


A few years ago, one of our teacher assistants suggested that a rubric describing the roles of teachers and learners in this model might help him in identifying where learners were at in their understanding. Working with my colleague John Golden, this pdf draft was developed. You will see that the role of the teacher moves from being a model, to being a mentor, to monitoring the learner.


There are many other resources available on this model. Fisher and Frey discuss it in Better Learning through Structured Teaching. @mrsebiology recently tweeted these resources (a framework and a matrix).


I hope this helps to answer the question, "What's GRR?" If you're interested in learning more, I would suggest: (1) find an expert to watch; (2) collaborate with the expert in your own classroom; and (3) modify it to make it work for you. At least that is how I learned to apply this model.

What support do learners need?

Last week I shared a lesson plan used to introduce the clock model for adding and subtracting fractions to a class of fifth-graders. This post focuses on the follow-up lesson, which concentrated on developing an anchor chart that learners could lean on as they solved progressively more difficult fraction computation problems. In particular, I will discuss how the instruction attempted to offer support so new learning could occur.

Learning is about moving from the known to the new. Therefore, we began by activating our schema regarding how we had used the clock model to add fractions in the previous lesson. Then we considered other fractions that could be represented using time as a context and began building an anchor chart based on our experiences with clocks in and out of the classroom.

An anchor chart supports learning by creating a record that learners can refer to as cognitive demand increases. In Reading with Meaning, Debbie Miller writes, "Anchor charts make our thinking permanent and visible, and so allow us to make connections from one strategy to another, clarify a point, build on earlier learning, and simply remember a specific lesson (p. 57)." This anchor chart offered the fifth-graders support both as a representation for thinking as they computed the fractions and a representation of thinking that they could point to as they communicated their thinking to their peers.

We worked through the number string together, with me starting the computation and learners offering advice as we went along. A number string is a series of progressively more difficult problems that build on the success of prior solutions. Being sure to use "I language," I started each problem by saying, "This reminds me of ..." As we went on, I asked more and more often, "What should I do next?"


From the perspective of the Gradual Release of Responsibility, my approach for this lesson would be considered Shared Practice [WITH]. (In the previous lesson, I had relied on Demonstration [TO] in order to support the introduction of the clock context - something new. Based on learners' efforts in that lesson, I was confident that they were ready for more responsibility.) With Shared Practice, the teacher supports learners by reinforcing how problem solvers get started, but there is still room for exploration and approximation as learners offer their suggestions for what comes next. This came in the form of the fifth-graders telling me what to do to complete the fraction problems. Not all of their suggestions worked, but we thought through them together and used our prior knowledge and anchor chart to get back on track. Any "mistakes" were used as an opportunity to foster a learning community that could support each other through difficult problems.

At the close of this lesson, I offered a final support - time to reflect. Without an opportunity to consolidate their experiences from the lesson, it is very likely that the learning would not last. I asked the fifth-graders to write in their journals a recount of the day using the What, So What, and Now What framework. Their responses would serve as a formative assessment used to inform future lessons. But that is for another post.