John Walkup

A trip into a classroom last year reminded me of an important ingredient of quality teaching. My memory is fuzzy, but I recall the grade level of the children as fifth grade. I remember the lesson quite well, however. The teacher was developing the concepts of median, mean, and mode and teaching the students how to perform the computations. The teacher was, for the most part, using a lot of research-based strategies during her lesson, which is what I was primarily seeking and measuring. However, many of the students were barely paying attention, and one of the students (I will call him “Thor”) was not only off-task but was pestering nearby students.

I sidled up to the teacher and told her that I was curious if students had a preference for one of the three statistical measures over the others. Which of the three – mean, median, or mode – do they consider the easiest to calculate, and why? (Naturally, the next question would be, “Which is the hardest, and why?”) I asked her if she would mind asking the question and putting the students into small peer groups to discuss their answers.

The results were magical. Even Thor dived into the discussion. “Pick the mode, Stupid! All you have to do is look for the number that shows up the most!” Although noisy, the class was filled with discussions on academic content. Furthermore, many students were re-reading their notes.

The key to classroom engagement and differentiating instruction is Bloom’s Taxonomy. By asking a higher-order (evaluation-level) question and prompting students to work in small groups, the teacher was able to engage every student in the class on lesson content. Gifted students were given a chance to lead the small-group discussions; weaker students learned the material by discussing it with their peers.

In my opinion, insufficient number of questions and activities centered on higher-order thinking skills is the most significant cause for low student achievement and classroom management problems.

In my last blog, I discussed how time that is often lost during the school day could be used to develop students’ vocabulary. I want to talk about vocabulary development a little more.

To many people, the term “vocabulary development” means “teaching students the meaning of new words.” That is only partially correct. For students to be taught vocabulary effectively, they need to not only know the meanings of the new words, but also be comfortable in their use. A true vocabulary is a working vocabulary; otherwise we run the risk of preparing students for Jeopardy, not real-world life skills.

Therefore, for students to have really learned a new word, they must have learned how to use the word in their everyday experiences. They not only need to recognize the word when they see it written and hear it spoken, they also need to be comfortable saying it and writing it. For a full vocabulary development approach, we need to employ at least four strategies:

1. Compelling students to say the word until they are comfortable pronouncing it.
2. Stating words out loud and asking students to listen carefully to its correct pronunciation.
3. Making students write the word until they consistently spell it correctly.
4. Writing the word on the board and pointing out its spelling intricacies.

Consider the word “segue.” If a student is not sure he knows how to spell the word correctly, then he will simply not write it and substitute a more comfortable word or phrase. In my opinion, “segue” is not truly in the student’s vocabulary. And if the student is not comfortable pronouncing the word, then the student is less likely to read more challenging material.

In summary, students need to be taught to recognize words in print, to say the words out loud, to write the words on their own, and to recognize words when they hear them.

This takes time, of course. Therefore it is important that teachers be careful in deciding which vocabulary words to choose to develop (and this is where Marzano’s word lists come in handy) and ensure that they are using as much of their allotted time as possible for true academic instruction.

Kerri White’s presentation on high school reform was one presentation I didn’t want to miss since I have a special interest in high school teaching. Kerri presented some ideas on how high schools should consider moving beyond the traditional teaching model. She provided numerous examples from high schools and programs around the country (including Fresno’s and Clovis’ very own CART program.) At the end, she asked participants for suggestions on how we can change the face of high school instruction. I had one: Students need instruction on how to find help on the Web, especially through the use of online discussion boards.

In my view, it is just as important to know where to get help and from whom then to possess the knowledge yourself. I log into discussion boards all the time seeking advice, and the results have often saved me a lot of trouble.

When I taught at National University, I required my students to join at least two online discussion boards and post semi-regularly. The idea is that students need to know that such help is available and how to obtain it. Registering, logging in, reading posts and FAQs, posting inquiries, and (most of all) not enraging members of the forum community are all skills that students will need in the future. I think it needs to be taught as part of the high school curriculum.

I don’t get to attend as many sessions at such conferences as desired because I have to stay close to our booth, but I was also able to slip into Jana Rowland’s and Cathy Douglas’ presentation on time-on-task. (Jana is the Team Leader for science and Cathy is the Team Leader for English language arts for the Oklahoma State Department of Education.) Although quality instructional time can be lost at any point during a classroom session, Jana chose to focus on the first few minutes, where time is often lost when students are coming in after talking with their friends. Cathy chose to focus on the end of the classroom session, when students begin gathering their materials in preparation for exiting the class.

Jana asked the participants, “What are the biggest barriers to improving the quality of time in our classrooms?” Participants mentioned many, including the ubiquitous complaint about PA announcements. (In my experience, the PA is not nearly as significant contributor to lost instructional time as many imagine; it is simply the most obvious.) Here is my response: The biggest obstacle to improving time-on-task is awareness; teachers simply do not appreciate the impact of losing ten minutes every day.

My approach is to measure time-off-task in vocabulary words. Each minute lost in class is a vocabulary word that was not taught. Think about ten minutes a day; that is 1,750 vocabulary words that could have been taught, but were not. (And teachers often say, “There isn’t enough time in the school year to teach students all these words!”) Even if we reduce the 175 days of instruction to 120 days of real instruction (see sde.state.ok.us/Services/Conference/Leadership/180days.ppt), that is still 1,200 vocabulary words each year. By the time a student graduates, we could have not taught 14,400 vocabulary words. How much is that? The average size of a college graduate’s vocabulary has often been cited as around 20,000. The 14,400 vocabulary words I cited previously are the additional words that a student could learn if provided ten more minutes of instruction per day.

My argument is not meant to be taken too literally – recovered instructional minutes are not necessarily devoted to the teaching of vocabulary. And I have not included the time needed to reinforce the vocabulary words they learned previously. My argument instead is designed to show the importance of time-on-task. Is ten minutes of instruction each day significant? You bet!