Don't stick peas in your ears

I have found the old saying, "what you resist, will persist" to be true in managing classrooms at the community college, college and graduate level, as well as at 1st, 2d 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade levels. I don't quite understand why this is true, but I have come to believe it.

In my experience, telling students what not to do is like telling them not to stick peas in their ears. It sets up a vicious cycle. Students get a good idea of what not to do, they do it, you get irritated, and you can go around and around on this, as many times as you choose.

The way out of this cycle, for me, is to tell students what I want them to do, and help them articulate why it matters. So, for example, instead of announcing rules about cell phones I say "give the class your undivided attention" and "treat everyone with respect." Students figure out that this means a lot of things, including turn off your cell phone and don't answer it in class.

When I take a class, for example, and the professor gives me a course description listing the things that I shouldn't do (don't skip this class, don't talk on your cell phone, don't leave early, don't turn things in late, etc.) it strikes me that these things must have happened frequently in this course in the past, and I get the idea they are likely to happen again. This makes me wonder whether the class is going to meet my needs, because I like to learn, and I like to be in groups where others share this desire. It also makes me wonder whether the class and/or the material is going to be boring!

Colleagues have told me that they can't leave out these warnings because if they did, students wouldn't behave.

I have had the opposite experience. I demand that my students treat me and each other with respect. I hold them accountable for this. I also set my expectations high in the Course Description:

You can expect me to:

• Prepare lessons that help you understand what you read and read more easily.
• Follow your progress to help you reach your educational goals.
• Treat you with respect.
• Be ready to start class on time, with the materials needed.
• Give the class my undivided attention.
• Be available to meet with you privately when you need 1-on-1 support.
• Return your work promptly.
• Ask questions and make mistakes as I learn what you need as you learn.
• Do my best.

I will expect you to:

• Take risks and make mistakes as you learn.
• Ask questions when you don’t understand.
• Ask for support when you need it.
• Treat others with respect.
• Attend every class, giving the class your undivided attention.
• Be ready to start class on time, with the materials you need.
• Participate actively and positively in class.
• Study at home roughly ½ hour each day.
• Complete assignments on time.
• Do your best.

Once we have gone over these expectations I can ask if there is anything unreasonable here. If not, then I trust my students will live up to the expectations, and with few exceptions, they do.

How to go deeper into Reading Apprenticeship

Here is the handout from the in-service presentation "But they don't read it!" from Sept. 30, including a collection of links and resources for more information about Reading Apprenticeship.

Several people have asked for books to read about the method:

The book I have found most inspiring is Building Academic Literacy: Lessons from Reading Apprenticeship Classrooms, Grades 6-12, edited by Audrey Fielding, Ruth Schoenbach, and Marean Jordan (scroll down if you use this link). In the first section a teacher who uses the method describes how he used the method, giving you the blow by blow details and showing the structure and delivery of a whole unit. I found it very helpful and concrete and exciting. The subsequent sections are written by other teachers using the method in different ways but I didn't find them as useful. Some of the teacher/writers seemed to have an emerging level grasp of the method and described difficulties they had in implementation. This book is available through LCC's Summit interlibrary loan and also can be purchased cheaply, used, through Amazon. 

Another resource is Reading for Understanding: How Reading Apprenticeship Improves Disciplinary Learning in Secondary and College Classrooms, 2nd Edition, by Ruth Schoenbach, Cynthia L. Greenleaf, and Lynn Murphy (scroll down if you use the link).  This is a longer book with a complete teaching guide and filled with useful resources. It's helpful and I'm excited to learn from it, but somehow I don't enjoy reading it. There is something removed about the writing. I can't put my finger on it, but it seems to be lacking concrete and direct voice. If I think of this as a reference book it seems more useful. It is chock full of amazing resources. This is available through LCC's library as an ebook that you can read online or download for up to 7 days. I imagine you could print sections for future reference but haven't tried it. I bought it from the WestEd website linked above. It's also available used on Amazon.

A third resource is Building Academic Literacy: An Anthology for Reading Apprenticeship, edited by Audrey Fielding, and Ruth Schoenbach (scroll down if you use this link). This is a collection of readings that English and Reading teachers could use as a student text to raise themes for discussion. I wasn't wowed by every selection, but that's a bit unrealistic of me, isn't it? It might be useful to use until you built up your own collection of materials. Seems like there should be enough OER materials on these themes to save the cost of student texts.

Using an inquiry approach

The most exciting feature, I think, of Reading Apprenticeship, is the fact that it fits so well with an inquiry approach. I am, in fact, doubtful that Reading Apprenticeship methods, by themselves, would yield strong learning gains, because students may not see the value of reading strategies. I think it's the inquiry that makes teaching the strategies possible.

From my reading I have learned the human brain was designed in hunter/gatherer times, and thus that hunting is a brain strength. This includes hunting for answers.

I like to dramatize this each fall at Halloween - with my hunter/gatherer of knowledge costume. 

If I can set up a meaty inquiry I can engage my students in hunting information. On their way, they are interested in learning more reading techniques because it helps them hunt successfully.

At the League for Innovations in Community Colleges conference in March 2013, Chabot College Emeritus faculty Cynthia Hicks presented a sample inquiry from a reading/writing classroom that was something like "Should the United States make gun control stronger?" Another type of inquiry was in the nature of a simulation: "Imagine you are a member of Congress and you are considering whether to..."

Some other possibilities (just brainstorming here):

Why does the order of operations work? 

How can I add fractions of different sizes?

What are the conditions that lead to war?

Why are human beings violent?

What effect does blue/green algae have on Oregon lakes?

What conditions lead cells to multiply beyond the body's ability to manage that growth? 

Is failure necessary to success?

(After much searching I have found, and will be posting here more examples from Prof. Hicks' presentation.)

More about the inquiry approach (from Prof. Hicks' presentation at the League):

According to Prof. Hicks, "inquiry is an instructional focus that engages students in activities to help them develop skills or strategies for dealing with data in order to say or write something about the data."

Teachers "pose very specific inquires for students," giving students data in the form of text. The inquiry appears as a prompt from the teacher, to write or think. The teacher gives the students the prompt before they begin to read.

"The whole point is to have the students get practice in working through the reading and figuring it out in order to respond. They develop knowledge and cognitive strategies for effective reading and analysis - it’s automatic."

"There are three ways to develop inquiry prompts:

1. present students with data about a controversial situation, something people argue about

2. give data with general information about the controversy, with a variety of perspectives

3. ask students to support an argument and support it. "

Prof. Hicks recommends using a limited set of data. "More is not better! Prevent overwhelm," she said.

"As part of the inquiry, teachers support readers' use of cognitive strategies:

• predicting
• picturing
• questioning
• connecting
• identifying a problem
• summarizing
• using fix ups"

"The critical strategy is to give students a clear purpose for reading. Students pay attention 

important content not trivia, related to the problem at hand. Students need to

identify patterns, predictions, inferences and conclusions, evaluating data for

bias, consistency, and compatibility with prior knowledge."

Prof. Hicks recommended What Works in Written Composition by George Hillocks as a guide to inquiry prompts. I did a quick check on Amazon but didn't find it. I haven't yet tried the campus library and library-sharing sites.

I found this interesting site about using inquiry in the math classroom.

Four ingredients of the Reading Apprenticeship method

The Reading Apprenticeship/inquiry method (published by WestEd) offers a promising way to help students improve college reading skills.

Here is a prezi I made for a faculty inservice last week, describing four key ingredients of the method, which I describe as:

1. Use inquiry
2. Read in class sometimes
3. Keep it collaborative
4. Talk about the content and the process of getting the content from the reading

The theme of this approach is that content area teachers (e.g. people who teach history, science, welding, culinary arts, auto-shop, art, etc.) are experts in reading in their academic disciplines, and if they are willing to share that expertise with students (their "reading apprentices"), students can become more skilled in reading along with becoming more skilled and knowledgable about the content.

I am calling this the "teach a person to fish" approach...


Credit where it's due: I created my summary based on

1) my reading of the text Building Academic Literacy: Lessons from Reading Apprenticeship Classrooms, Grades 6-12, by Audrey Fielding, Ruth Schoenbach and Marean Jordan; and

2) my readings from the text Reading for Understanding: How Reading Apprenticeship Improves Disciplinary Learning in Secondary and College Classrooms, 2nd Edition, by Ruth Schoenbach, Cynthia L. Greenleaf, Lynn Murphy, 

3) attending portions of the RA101 online course from WestEd, and

4) the excellent presentation by Chabot College emeritus faculty Cynthia Hicks
at the March, 2013 League for Innovation in Community Colleges conference.

"Personal reading training" aka using miscue analysis with adults

One way to help students improve their reading is to help them become aware of what they are doing when they read. Ruth Davenport, in her excellent teaching resource, "Miscues, not Mistakes" offers a technique called "Over the Shoulder" miscue analysis.

I tried out Davenport's method in my developmental reading class in Fall term 2012 and found it eye-opening and useful.

My first hurdle was how to market the process to adults. Many of my students, I knew, had unpleasant associations from remedial reading interventions in K-12 years. I positioned myself as a personal trainer who would help them practice and gain strength in reading - renaming the process "personal reading trainings."

Here's the assignment I created to make this method part of the course, including explanation of the trainings and their purpose.

Here's the list of reading strategies I was teaching from that term, adapted from "Readers and Writers with a Difference," by Rhodes and Dudley-Marling.

I created a form I used to collect data during the personal reading trainings, which I will link to here, when I dig it out of my archived Moodle shell (argh).



What are miscues? 

When we read, we make sense of the text as we go along, and we do that by bringing our own knowledge and experience to what we are reading. Sometimes we read the words exactly as the author wrote them, and sometimes we change words as we read, in an effort to make sense of the text. This change might be harmless (no change in meaning) or it might change and distort the author's meaning.

The technical term for the changes we make is "miscues." To illustrate the difference between changes that don't change the meaning and changes that do, in Davenport's book she tells a true story of a man with a graduate degree in Business who reads the book Blueberries for Sal aloud to his young daughter. As he reads the story, he changes some of the words. Perhaps he read berry instead of blueberry, or mama bear, mama or the little bear's mother, instead of mother bear.

The question for a "personal reading trainer" listening to this reading would not be merely whether the reader changed the text. The question would be: did the reader change the meaning? And why did the reader change the text?

Each miscue offers a window into the reader's process of making sense of the text. So, for example, when the father read aloud to his daughter, he made many changes, but he didn't change the meaning. He naturally made the book more accessible to his daughter. Thus he made miscues, but not mistakes.

Merlot wins my content, hands down, over Connexions

I took some time to compare two Open Education Resource (OER) repositories: Rice University's Connexions and the California state system repository called Merlot. I'd used Merlot in the past, and got a bit irritated with the multiple cataloging screens that come before uploading each resource, so I thought I'd try out Connexions.

First, I tried to set up an account. Every time I took action on the screen there was a bit of wait time - probably 30 seconds. Not too long, really, but longer than most web pages, especially since I was trying this near midnight on a Saturday. Could this be a high-traffic time?

When I tried to use the link the system sent to my email I immediately got an error message. I tried again and got another email. I noticed on the second time around that just underneath that first link was another one to use if the first one didn't work! Hmm. Why not fix the first link, instead of sending a link and a work-around?

Next, I set about to upload content. This meant reading several pages on the website to grasp new vocabulary. Hmm. This is starting to remind me of WordPress. Learning tech speak is not my favorite pastime - I'll do it if I have to, but there had better be a good reason...

I made it this screen to create a "module," only to find that I should upload a Word file, an Open Office file or type material into a box that looked like it needed html.

Hmm. I use Google docs. I could have cut and pasted the material into a word-processing document, but why bother when Merlot is so much easier.

After Connexions, Merlot seems like a dream to upload materials. Here's the main screen, which, to be fair, is followed by several cataloging screens, but it took me about 2 or 3 minutes to do each resource. Merlot is also flexible, allowing you to upload the material in the form you wish:

Getting to know students in Week 1

I've been updating the survey I use to get to know students. It's important to me to find out things like what other responsibilities students have, what they want me to know about them and their learning, what other school experiences they have had, and why they are taking my course.

A few resources to share:

1. Paper surveys for students:

Here's my current student survey. Sometimes I ask students to do this for homework, sometimes I ask for them to do it during class. I use the same format for all assignments: title, purpose and directions. If it's homework I add a section for due date before the directions.

Here's my sample response to the survey, which I ask students to read before they complete theirs. I'm using this to show students how I'd like them to answer in complete sentences, and to help them get to know me.

2. Survey online with a Google form:

I also experimented with putting the survey into a Google form, to be filled out online. If I were orienting students to Moodle right away I could put a link to this in Moodle. This looks promising as way to give students practice working online in the course. Here is what that looks like (just the top):

3. Survey online as part of a Moodle orientation activity:

In the past I have embedded these survey questions into a Moodle questionnaire.

This was part of a Moodle orientation activity, so it required students to try out whatever Moodle functions I was planning to use that term. Students might need to send messages to classmates, emails to me, post and reply to forum posts, check their grade, open and read course documents in Moodle and post questions about them, and print something from Moodle, etc.

Here is what that looks like:

Netiquette

"Hey you!" "Yo!"

Teaching in a classroom with an online course website, teaching a hybrid class and teaching a fully online course all require students to appreciate the need for courtesy. As we have all learned the hard way at least once, written communications are easy to fire off and difficult to erase from memory, if they are offensive.

The recommended link for online etiquette, or "netiquette" that the Lane faculty technology course recommended for sharing with students was this.

The same rules appear at this site, in a relatively nicer format, although you can't see all of the rules at a glance, at least on my screen. Also the explanation of the concepts is very brief. This is either an improvement or not as useful, depending on your perspective. As time passes it would be nice if these ideas were becoming absorbed in tech culture, but I am not sure if that has happened, or if it will.

Another best practice to prompt student courtesy is to define expectations for email and posting online. An engaging way to do this that I learned from Barbi McLain is to collect some of the more bizarre and egregious communications you receive, scramble them to protect student privacy, and share them with new students working in pairs or trios. The students can use the samples to create guidelines they feel are appropriate and workable. Or, students could compare their sense of the guidelines needed to the collection of non-examples that you provide. You could also ask each student to bring a non-example to class, redacted to protect privacy.

Increasing student persistence with Dweck's mindset theory

Carol Dweck's "mindset" theory is very useful in preparing students to take risks and persist in the face of challenge. (Thanks to master teachers Susan Reddoor and Merrill Watrous for recommending this resource!)

To summarize briefly and broadly, Dweck describes two attitudes towards success: fixed mindset and growth mindset.

Fixed mindset is the conviction that your success comes from talent - something you were born with. Growth mindset is the belief that your success comes from effort.

The problem with fixed mindset is that if you believe that your success is based on talent, you tend to avoid risk and challenge. Failing is a sign that you don't have as much talent as you thought you had.

On the other hand, growth mindset supports learning and the risks that come with it. If you believe that your success will come through effort, failure is not a permanent condition and does not need to be feared. It's just a stop on the road to success.

Dweck's book is filled with true stories from sports and business that demonstrate her points.

Here's how I use Dweck's theory:

1. I assign students to read a short excerpt about Michael Jordan and how he achieved it. This could be in class, with partners, or started in class and completed at home.

2. I give students a prompt and two sample reflections I wrote describing a time I was successful and whether I believe that success came from talent or effort. They read the sample in class and review directions for writing their own reflection online in the Moodle course shell for homework. This writing could also be started in class.

3. At the next class I ask students to think/pair/share in class about their reactions to the reading and whatever they wish to share about their own experiences (this is optional, since some reflections are very personal).

4. I then lead a group discussion about mindset and how it affects learning.

When I used this assignment in Week 1 I found students performed noticeably better on more challenging assignments later in the term. It was clear that students found this assignment affirming. I have many students who overcome huge challenges just to enroll in community college, and who do not see themselves as having "talent." The message that success comes through effort is supportive and prepares them, psychologically, to persist in the face of academic challenge.

After the first use I rewrote my sample reflection. I divided it into two samples - reflecting differing points of view, so that students understand that I am seeking an honest reflection, not a "right answer," i.e., a reflection that parrots the mindset described in the sample.

Checking in with students during the term

Early in Week 2 is a good time to survey students about the course. Here is a sample paper survey. I have also adapted this survey as an online Moodle questionnaire in some terms. 

I change questions 7 through 10 each term so that they reflect the learning objectives covered between the start of the course and the survey. In later versions the final block said: "Is there anything else you think I should know?"

I find students appreciate that I am holding myself and the new community accountable for the promises in the Course Description, which include things like we will treat each other with respect and we need a safe place to make mistakes. I find many students, excited at the start of the term, write positive notes to me in the open-ended section at the end. This helps them make a commitment to the course and hold that commitment when the going gets tough.

If a student gives a negative answer (false or very false), I follow up right away to find out why, typically by email, because that's easy for me to do quickly. This has been very rare, and so it hasn't been time-consuming. 

Whether I use a paper form or an online form I respond briefly to each student after I read this.

I'm an expert reader, or am I?

I used to put a small figurine of a wizard on my overhead projector in Reading class. I would announce, with as much drama as I could muster, that the wizard was there to remind us that reading is "magical." Cute, but I was pointing emerging readers in the wrong direction. 

Most people already believe that reading happens by magic. Some people read well - they have the magic. Some people have to struggle to understand what they read - they don't.  

By the time we're adults, we think we know if we have the magic. Most of us think it's decided in elementary school. By third grade, I thought my label was best reader of all. I finished the "silver" readings in the SRA box, beating two boys who were contenders.


Neither high school nor college challenged my impression that I was naturally talented at reading. I made enough sense of the texts to take exams and write papers. There were some challenges, as most of the books I read in college were in another language. I figured out (was it laziness? arrogance?) that I could skip most of the words I didn't know, using the context to find their meaning. 

Law school stopped me in my tracks. Each class required reading an encyclopedia-sized tome of legal decisions written by judges. The writing was abstract and obtuse, loaded with technical legal terms both in English and in Latin. 

Luckily, first year law professors taught us in class to read and analyze legal decisions, at the start of fall term. They gave us five key questions to answer in reading each case. They taught us on how to organize our notes to prepare for their Socratic questions in class. I succeeded in reading law because experts taught me how to read law.

Yet the amount we were responsible for comprehending in law school took more hours than we had in the day (even after we eliminated sleeping, exercising, former friends, and family). Following the model of the law students in the Paper Chase, my buddies and I formed a study group. Each of us took responsibility for doing a close reading of the assignments in one course and making outlines of the key information to share and teach the other members. By the time I studied for the bar exam I knew that I had to underline, annotate, take notes and organize my notes into study outlines if I wanted to understand and remember what I read. The experts we learned from may have been fictitious, but the method worked.

Twenty years later, when I returned to grad school to learn more about teaching, there was plenty of reading and new vocabulary. I already had teaching experience and I could adapt the reading strategies from law school. I was able to function as a "good" reader. 

It came as a bit of shock, then, this past winter, when I tried and failed to comprehend a book I wanted to read. The book, ironically, is about the process of reading inside the brain.

First, there were these diagrams, optimistically titled "Getting Oriented in the Brain." My brain balked. Every learning styles inventory I have ever completed confirms that my visual and spatial knowledge is weak. This diagram of a three-dimensional object makes my brain reel. It's labeled with scientific terms that are just as useful to me as their Chinese translations. What do I do with this diagram? Memorize it? Refer to it later? What have I done in the past when faced with a problem like this? I figured I could skip it.

I read on to see if the words could unlock the author's meaning. Here's an example from a section about what the eye does when you read. To make sense of this paragraph I would need to know at least a little something about the parts of my eye and their functions: the fovea, retina, thalamus and cortex. I know the iris and, uh, the eyeball. 

This was just one paragraph. Many more to go.

I did what my students do - I stopped trying. I wasn't succeeding in making meaning. I made the calculus my students make: Can I get by without this information? Sure.

The following term, though, I was teaching future K12 teachers to teach reading. It seemed only fair that I should share my struggles with the neuroscience book and attempt it again, when I assigned my students to read and share a professional teaching book. I needed to model the best practice of doing the assignments myself. As luck would have it, one of my students was interested in dyslexia, which is covered in one chapter. I promised my student I would figure out what the author had to say about dyslexia and share that with him.

Armed with a concrete reading purpose, and back in familiar study group mode, I made a new effort. It took several tries. I'm hopeful that I managed to make decent sense of the author's main ideas about dyslexia, and explain them. I still couldn't have explained the scientific basis for the author's conclusions. If you asked me about it today, I might be able to recall the general thesis. I attribute my success in this, such as it was, to this fact: unlike my students, I knew I could stop after one chapter if I wanted to.

How is it that a good reader like me struggled to read a book about science that was intended for the general public? 

Reading is not magic. It's a complex process that has everything to do with our skill in making sense of the text, which is based, in large measure, on our ability to bring our own knowledge and experience to the text. Give me a text in the field of law, education, humanities or social science, and I am on solid ground. I have little knowledge and experience in science. To read a science text, and really understand it, I'll need to apprentice myself to a master.

Learning as the process of making a new habit

As teachers of adults we are in the business of encouraging students to make new habits and routines, whether it's reading a book differently, using a new set of steps to write, or managing time.

The difficulty of learning something new, for an adult, is that it often requires unlearning something we are holding on to as the truth. This is the process of change.

My goal (stolen from Ken Bain) is to change the way my students "think, act and feel." It's frustrating to find that a student mimicked new ways of thinking and acting during the term, but went back to old ways as soon as the ink was dry on the final.  I want my students to "change for good."

One way to help students change, whether it's physical habits or habits of mind, is to help them activate their background knowledge and become conscious of the process of change. We can ask them to briefly think/discuss with a pair/share with the class the process they have been through in order to successfully make a change.

Whether it's weight loss, smoking or learning how to draw, the process for establishing a new habit or routine has familiar stages, including:

• becoming dissatisfied with the existing way of doing or thinking about things
• facing up to the benefits of the existing habit 
• deciding to change the habit 
• getting ready/making plans to change
• starting to make the change 
• facing setbacks - continuing the new habit after returning to the old one and having to restart 

For example, if the learning objective is for students to use a time management tool, like a planner, the stages might look like this:

• I see the downside of trying to keep all deadlines in my head
• I realize there was an upside, though, because if I don't write anything down, I don't have to think about deadlines until they're a problem
• I decide I need to manage my time differently in college because it's important to my success
• I checked out various tools and I got a planner for Fall term
• At the first class I put deadlines in the planner
• In Week 2 I left the planner at home and didn't enter any deadlines
• In Week 5 I got a progress report that showed I had failed to hand in several assignments, so I pulled out the planner and tried again...

Changing for Good, by James Prochaska, John Norcross and Carlo DiClemente is an excellent resource for supporting the process of change. The authors describe the stages of change along with detailed suggestions about how to support change at each stage.
The more we, as teachers, understand about this process, the better we can support students going through it.

Teaching time management

A colleague asked for ideas and resources to teach time management. She is teaching a 45 minute session on the topic for high school students getting ready to start community college.

Here is a link to a summary of a time management unit with sample objectives, lesson plans, links to forms and models including some sample student work, and open educational resources.

Background on the unit: In Effective Learning (EL115) it's typical to spend a week on this unit, and in College Preparatory Reading (RD80 it's common to spend several few days. The focus has been on teaching students to use three paper-based tools, the master schedule (term or monthly calendar), the weekly routine (or weekly schedule) and the daily to do list.

Teaching a standalone session: I have listed below three goals that might work for a single session, with ideas for teaching. In my experience, simply telling students that they will need to change their habits to succeed in college is very unlikely to make any impact. Students (especially high school students and recent graduates) have to reach this conclusion themselves. Your overarching mission is to offer students information and second-hand experience so that they don't have to learn this lesson the hard way.

Goal 1: Students identify the need to manage their own time in college.

The need for time management is news to high school students, who often haven't learned yet that:

• in college courses you have fewer class hours each week
• you'll learn significant portions of the material studying on your own
• college teachers don't go over everything you need to know in class
• you are expected to spend 2 hrs. studying each week for every 1 class hour (or 1 credit hr.) (for example: 6 hours studying outside class every week for each of your 3 credit classes in addition to the three hours a week of class attendance)
• you have to track your own deadlines - teachers won't be doing this for you
• there may be assignments that only earn credit if they are turned in on time
• you have to read the materials for each course on Day 1 of Week 1 to see the dates & rules

Here is a link to my favorite summary of how high school and college are different.

There are several ways you could help students reach this first goal:

• give students stories of students struggling with time management and have the students troubleshoot and discuss the issues they see (see the introduction lesson in the time management unit for more on this approach)
• invite successful students to come share tales of problems and solutions in person
• collect and show short video interviews with students describing problems and solutions 

Goal 2: Students select a time management tool or tools to try out this term.

Give students sample tools to touch and see. Have students analyze and discuss the purpose and relative strengths and weaknesses of the tools, including:

• book-based planners (if the LCC planner has come out as planned that is the place to start)
• paper tools for your binder (weekly routine charts, monthly calendars, daily to do lists)
• white boards for the fridge with/without calendars 
• iphone/ipad/cell phone calendars and reminder apps, etc. 

There are several issues that bear discussion:

• Which tool(s) is the student most likely to keep with them and see regularly? 
• Which tool(s) are more like the ones they already use to keep track of dates and information that is important to them? 
• Which ones cost money? Is it worth spending money on this tool or is there a free option?
• Which ones are easy to use immediately?

Goal 3: Students recognize it's typical to need more than one attempt to establish a new routine and they know where they can get information and support to improve their time management.

Resources could include:

• High school transition program office
• Tutor Central
• Academic advisers and counselors
• List of websites
• List of books at the Lane library 

See my next post on the stages of habit change for more information related to Goal #3.

Badges as assessment planning

In my dreams I start each term with an assessment plan that identifies the learning goals for each week, the learning objectives that get students to the goal, and my plan for assessing student progress on each of the objectives. For me this the holy grail - worth seeking but not easily attained!

This term I am experimenting with creating badges based on the learning objectives. It seems like a badge could be a miniature segment of an assessment plan - incorporating the learning objective and the assessment in one virtual, visual object that would make the plan transparent for students and be useful not just for planning the course but for measuring student progress during and after the term.

So far I am failing at this, making the same mistake over and over. Here are badges I have created:

I started with tech objectives for a class that dematerialized, then shifted to badges to clarify the pieces of a Career Awareness curriculum I am inheriting. I gave the different "series" of badges (meaning courses or units within courses) distinct shapes. Ideally there would be a way to put them in folders. 

Sample badge for Career Awareness:

Problem: Creating a milestone diagram is something a student does, and it can be my assessment evidence, but it's not the learning objective the student achieved. Perhaps the learning objective goes in the Description, and the Criteria is the assessment plan, like this:

Disability accommodation in the syllabus/course description

I'm reviewing my course descriptions for start of term, and pondering the disability accommodation paragraph that gets tacked on to the end. I came upon a valuable article in the Chronicle of Higher Education discussing the topic.

The author argues for re-writing the paragraph so that it's a positive statement about universal design of the learning environment to include all students. He suggests moving the statement up top, above the learning objectives, to make it clear this is a key feature of the course design.

He provides a model statement:

"Universal Learning

I am committed to the principle of universal learning. This means that our classroom, our virtual spaces, our practices, and our interactions be as inclusive as possible. Mutual respect, civility, and the ability to listen and observe others carefully are crucial to universal learning.

Any student with particular needs should contact [Name], the Academic Access and Disability Resources Coordinator, at the start of the semester. The Dean of Students’ office will forward any necessary information to me. Then you and I can work out the details of any accommodations needed for this course."

I like the content, especially the shift to address all students instead of the tiny subset who are eligible for, and make it through the formal accommodations process. Two tweaks for my setting: 

• The style and vocabulary are high academic. I'm guessing that universal learning, virtual spaces, inclusive, civility and crucial will cause fundamental ABE readers to stumble. 
• This calls for longer text. I'm aiming for a 2-page course description with lots of white space.

Riffing on his model, then, I took a stab at a blended, improved one for my courses, inserted at the top.

Working around barriers (EARLIER DRAFT):

I do my best to design and lead this course so that everyone can learn! If something is getting in the way of your learning, let me know right away. You may also be eligible for formal accommodations if you need support or assistance because of a disability. Contact the Disability Resources at (541) 463-5150 (TTY 463-3079), or stop by Building 1, Room 218.

Then I checked this against campus policy. Our college requires that we include specific accommodation language in our syllabuses, in 12 point font that is easy to read.

UPDATED VERSION - 12 point font - regular, black text - for the middle of the first page: 

Working around barriers:

I do my best to design and lead this course so that everyone can learn! If something is getting in the way of your learning, let me know right away. You may also be eligible for formal accommodations. To request assistance or accommodations related to disability, contact Disability Resources at (541) 463-5150 (voice), 711 (TTY), disabilityresources@lanecc.edu (e-mail), or stop by Building 1, Room 218. 

Please be aware that any accessible tables and chairs in this room should remain available for authorized students who find that standard classroom seating is not usable.

Here is the context I create to address the mutual civility/respect concept:

Expectations:      The motto of this class is “All for one, and one for all.”

You can expect me to:

• Prepare lessons that help you understand what you read and read more easily.
• Follow your progress to help you reach your educational goals.
• Treat you with respect.
• Be ready to start class on time, with the materials needed.
• Give the class my undivided attention.
• Be available to meet with you privately when you need 1-on-1 support.
• Return your work promptly.
• Ask questions and make mistakes as I learn what you need as you learn.
• Do my best.

I will expect you to:

• Take risks and make mistakes as you learn.
• Ask questions when you don’t understand.
• Ask for support when you need it.
• Treat others with respect.
• Attend every class, giving the class your undivided attention.
• Be ready to start class on time, with the materials you need.
• Participate actively and positively in class.
• Study at home roughly ½ hour each day.
• Complete assignments on time.
• Do your best.