Success Criteria, Learning Targets, Standards Oh My! by Kristen Fusaro-Pizzo

 Success Criteria, Learning Targets, Standards Oh My! by Kristen Fusaro-Pizzo

Keeping up with the latest educational rhetoric may be more fast-paced than Tik Tok, Twitch, and Snapchat combined, which can leave teachers feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. 

We're hoping to bring some clarity to the confusion and put your mind at ease. 

If we’re looking at it through a physical metaphor:

1. Standards

   1. Curricula

      1. Learning Targets

         1. Content & Skills

            1. Success Criteria

               1. Assessment

                  1. Single-Point Rubric

                     1. Feedback

                        1. Reflection

Standards:  Educational standards are the learning goals for what students should know and be able to do at each grade level. These are NOT to be confused with curricula. 

Curricula: How students will achieve the learning goals for each grade level (the standards). The curricula are comprised of content and skills. This will combine the “big picture” of the course - themes, units, assessments, essential questions, deeper understandings - and how they all intertwine. 

Learning Targets: These have traditionally been called “Aims.” They consist of content, skills, or sometimes both, that students should achieve “daily” (we put “daily” in quotes because we recognize some Learning Targets are more complex than others).

Content:  The specific material chosen for the course. For example, a physical education class may focus on HIIT workouts for one unit of content and yoga/restorative practices for another unit of content. 

Skills: Skills are the methods by which students learn the content. These should be transferable to any content. For example, understanding what “sine, cosine, and tangent” are is a necessary skill for the course contents of geometry and trigonometry. 

Success Criteria: These are, essentially, the tasks necessary to get students to achieve the Learning Target (whether that’s part of the daily task or a bigger assessment). We like to think of it as a “checklist” of explicit and clear steps that students need to take to achieve the bigger goal. Students should then be able, on their own or with each other, to reflectively review the criteria to note how he/she is doing.  

Assessment: Assessments are the means by which we understand student progress.  This is how we determine how much learning a student has acquired over a period of time. Assessments can be summative, which is meant to evaluate students at the end of a learning experience. More frequently, assessments are formative, which evaluates students throughout a learning experience. Assessments should be aligned to success criteria so that students can evaluate their own progress.

Single-Point Rubric: The Single-Point Rubric outlines the success criteria for how a student will be evaluated on an assessment. It allows for a more holistic approach to offering feedback.  While a traditional rubric would scale “Not Yet (1), Developing (2), Approaching (3), Mastery (4),” Single-Point Rubric addresses only on the “Mastery” end of the spectrum focusing solely on high expectations. 

Feedback: Feedback is how students receive information about their learning and progress. Feedback can be direct from educator-to-student, from student-to-student, or from student-to-self. Feedback is how a student can understand where he/she needs more support to achieve mastery. 

Reflection: The ultimate and final goal of the whole educational process is reflection because the point of reflection is the epitome of independent learning. Reflection asks students (and educators) to deconstruct and analyze the process. What went right? What went wrong? Why?  This is the point where students should be able to refer back to the feedback they received and the success criteria to determine what level of mastery they have achieved. 

Are there any other terms you would like clarification on or strategies for how to use these in your classroom?  Let us know by sending an email to teacherleaders@sitechhs.com. 

It Starts With Standards: Translating Success Criteria into Student-Friendly Language for Designing Learning Tasks by Kristen Fusaro-Pizzo

I have been teaching English for 14 years and I can say that standards are terrifying. In those 14 years, I have been asked to evaluate and reevaluate at least seven different collections of standards: New York State Standards, Common Core Standards, Priority Learning Standards, Learning Maps, Next Generation Standards, Advanced Placement Standards, Regents Standards. While I idealistically like to believe that each evolution of standards has gotten educators closer to closing the achievement gap presented in A Nation at Risk (1983), the standards continuously fail to show educators how to use them.


Over time, I have come to understand that a major part of developing and designing an effective curriculum is first deconstructing the standards for students. While this may seem obvious, most of the conversations I have had with students around standards relate back to rote memorization and regurgitation. “The teacher told me to ‘Examine and analyze what makes a claim valid by determining if supporting evidence is relevant and sufficient” (Priority Learning Standard R7 & 8, 11th-12th grade English). Great. What does that mean?


Blank stare.


Unless students are able to specifically understand what the standards are asking them to do, they cannot properly perform the task to our expectations. This is what creates achievement gaps.


We hand back an assignment with a grade, probably even a standards-aligned rubric, circle the parts we thought were ineffective, the student looks at the grade, the circles, then the grade, and makes a decision whether to shrug and accept it or “argue” with the teacher.


I put the term “argue” in quotation marks because this is also part of the issue: The perception of the teacher is that he/she is being questioned on his/her authority as an educator based on the assessment.


Isn’t that ironic? Teachers question the ability of the student based on their performance of the assessment, and we don’t view that as presumptive or judgemental. Yet, did we provide masterful examples of the assessment… some by students, and one definitely by us? Were our directions absolutely clear? Did we outline and explain the standards in language where students could clearly understand and articulate success?


Instead, we must view these conversations as ways for us to reassess how we teach standards. And yes, I mean we actually have to teach the standards.

Image from Assessing with Respect by Starr Sackstein*



UNPACK THE STANDARDS

The first question is - What standards do I use if they are always changing? What I’ve done is taken the most recent few published standards and find their similarities: The specific skills, content, and learning targets. I started by reading the standards to look for repetitive language which could be confusing. This year, I’ve translated it to these Power Standards and Learning Targets which I believe best apply to my specific course, a 12th-grade college-level course called “Gods, Monsters, and the Apocalypse.”


As I craft an assessment (or learning task) that addresses Priority Learning Standards R7 & 8, I must first make sure students understand what “Examine and analyze what makes a claim valid by determining if supporting evidence is relevant and sufficient” means. I’ve noticed that educators toss around the word analyze with the expectation that this concept is clear. It’s not. Every time the standards address the word “analyze” (and that’s 23 references in the Priority Learning Standards for ELA), we are asking students to examine details to elicit meaning.


I can translate it to: “Students will investigate the information being presented in a claim to ensure it justifies the main argument with details.” Essentially, how will a student know he/she has been successful at this specific task?

• The student is able to identify the main argument (or claim).
• The student can identify and discern if the evidence supports the claim or if the evidence detracts from the claim.
• The student determines how many details and how in-depth the details need to be to make the argument sufficient.

The best way to work on this is to be mindful of your own steps while you perform the task. (And yes, you should always perform your own assessments to ensure your directions are crystal clear.) Write every single step down. (More on this in the How Does This Work section.)


When Designing a Learning Task

• Select the Priority Learning Standards to be addressed.
• Determine the content and skills embedded in the Priority Learning Standards.
• Construct the task to meet the Priority Learning Standards.
• Identify the theme or topic.

HOW DOES THIS WORK?

Whether co-constructed or teacher-constructed, a student must have the ability to knowledgeably speak to the standards being addressed in the learning task when discussing his/her own level of mastery of the topic. This is the ultimate goal that drives independent learning. If the student cannot understand what the criteria for success are, then he/she will probably have difficulty understanding your feedback. This is where you’ll find yourself giving the same feedback over and over again.


Math Example of How This Works

Peter Dellegrazie, a mathematics teacher, offers an example of how he uses Success Criteria in his daily formative assessments for Algebra II:

The Task: Draw a unit circle diagram rotating an angle through 60 degrees and determine the ordered pairs where the terminal ray intersects the circle.

As explained to me: “While [students] were working on an example, they had to find the ordered pairs where a 60-degree angle intersects a unit circle, so I set up the following [success criteria]:

• Can I draw a unit circle?
• Can I draw a 60-degree angle in standard position?
• Can I form a right triangle?
• Can I label the side lengths?
• Can I find the ordered pair where the angle intersects the circle?
• Can I connect this to the sine and cosine of 60 degrees?

If a student answers ‘no’ to any of these questions, we (teacher or classmate) know exactly where
the wheels came off.”

Peter’s example starts with standards: “Extend the domain of trigonometric functions using the unit circle” (Common Core).


I like to think of it as writing a recipe for baking. The completed cookie is the final outcome of your Project-Based Learning “summative assessment”, but all of the steps involved are the “formative assessments” used as the pathway to completion.


Identify and weigh out all of the materials. (Standard)

• I can identify different measuring tools. (Success criteria)
• I can identify and measure ¾ cup of brown sugar. (Success Criteria)
• I can identify and measure 1 cup of butter (Success Criteria)
• I can identify and measure 1 tablespoon of baking soda. (Success criteria)

Combine wet ingredients. (Standard)

• I can measure ¾ cup brown sugar. (Success criteria)
• I can measure 1 cup of butter. (Success criteria)
• I can keep the 1 tablespoon of baking soda to the side because it is not considered a wet ingredient.
• I can melt the butter and mix it with brown sugar. (Success criteria)

It’s a matter of process-thinking. What are all of the steps necessary to achieve success and complete the task?


These steps become elevated depending on the level and point in the curriculum. For English, in 9th or 10th grade, I may ask students to identify the imagery in a poem by looking at the language related to the five senses. For an 11th grade class, I may ask students to explain how the imagery in a poem elicits mood and tone by first asking them to identify the imagery by looking at the language related to the five senses before any other steps.


AM I DOING THIS RIGHT?

I cannot stress enough the importance of examples. I challenge you to complete your own learning task by following your own directions. Essentially, the success criteria should be step-by-step guidelines that allow students to clearly see the steps towards mastery (completion). As you’re working on your task, pretend you are a student doing this for the first time. Is it meaningful? Is it engaging? Do the steps lead to the final outcome? IS IT CLEAR?


As a final self-check, I like to ask my husband (who is not an educator), or my colleagues in other departments to look at my learning tasks and the success criteria I have outlined for it to see if they can understand.


But more importantly, I use my own process thinking to demonstrate how I work on the assessment. This is an example I used when I taught Macbeth to high school sophomores: Click Here. I gave them this document, I talked them through the document, and then I extended beyond by asking them to define their own success criteria for the different stages of the writing process.


EXTENDING BEYOND

Phase I: Students will need to be reflective of their work via the success criteria to understand what level of mastery they have attained. This requires time allotted within the learning process and task design to allow for student reflection. This can be student-to-self, student-to-student, or student-to-teacher, but eventually must become student-to-self so they can be independent learners.


Phase II: Once teachers have a full understanding of the success criteria for their own learning tasks, and students are able to be reflective, the next level would be to co-construct success criteria with students. At this level, the teacher already knows all of the different steps but is asking students to deconstruct the process to identify the steps for themselves.


THE GOAL

Ultimately, the goal of success criteria is to create a clear outline for students to be able to be reflective, independent learners. They should be able to identify their own areas of struggle so that they can look to you for strategies of improvement on those areas, or use inquiry to discover pathways to guide them towards ultimate success.

FROM STUDENTS

A few of my seniors took a minute to offer their perspectives on working with standards this year: Flipgrid Videos.

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*This is an affiliate link.

A Fresh Take on KHANtent by Patrick Misciagnia

 

See the video on YouTube here.

Cameras Off? Quick Ways to Engage an Audience in Video Conferencing by Kristen Fusaro-Pizzo

I recently gave an anonymous survey asking high school students and high school educators across the United States to explain their camera usage on video conferencing.  (Link to the open survey here. I'm keeping it open so I can keep learning and sharing.) 

Based on the 176 responses I received, numerous conversations with students as a teacher and with faculty as an instructional coach, it comes down to a few simple responses to why students and educators alike choose to keep their cameras off.  I will pull some direct quotes... let's see if you can determine if it was a student or an educator:

1. "When I was having a bad day or didn't seem to look presentable I did not feel comfortable turning my camera on. "
2. "I don't think it's necessary because the presenter is usually presenting their screen so we are not interacting with each other."
3. "Most of the times the presenters are on screen-share, so I feel like there is no point."
4. "When I was having a bad day or didn't seem to look presentable I did not feel comfortable turning my camera on."
5. "If I'm just a spectator, which happens when information is delivered AT us, what's the point?"
6. "I’m not comfortable showing my face."
7. "It can be draining to always be "camera-ready", especially for people I do not know."

Were you able to figure out which responses were educators and which were students?  1. Student, 2. Educator, 3. Student, 4. Student, 5. Educator, 6. Student, 7. Educator.   Are you surprised by any?

While those are only samplings of the responses, they resonate for about 85% of the echoed reasons that educators and students keep their cameras off.

Students and educators are self-conscious and disengaged.

While we, as presenters, may not have control over the chaos in the background (which makes up for roughly 10% of the reasons students and educators did not turn their cameras on), we can certainly have a positive impact around a camera-anxious and disillusioned audience.

I will present a list of some strategies you could use to create a Healthy Video Conferencing Environment to help reduce the anxiety around videos.

1. Build a Community. I put this first because it is, by far, the most important. The best way to tackle self-consciousness and disengagement is by building relationships. 
1. Lead by Example: If you want cameras on, keep your camera on. 
2. Use Names: As people come into meetings/class, greet them by name.
3. Play Attendance Games: I take attendance by asking my students a silly question and have them answer me with their voice (i.e.: What is your favorite video game?) I use this as a way to bond and have them bond with each other.
4. Share Yourself: Share fun and funny anecdotes about yourself throughout your presentation (of course, use professional discretion).
5. Check-in: You can do informal check-ins to gauge the mood temperature of the room.  Sometimes I open up a short forum for people to discuss, sometimes I ask them to share it in the chat, sometimes I use the polling feature.  Mix it up so every voice is heard.
6. Be Consistent: The best way to build trust is to be reliable, the easiest way to become reliable is to follow-through.  If you offer an agenda one day, offer it every day. If you promise you will follow-up by a certain date, do that. Don't hold yourself to expectations you can't keep  (this is also self-care: only promise what you know you can and WILL accomplish). 
2. Establish Norms and Procedures.  Whether you're presenting as an educator, as a student, or in general, it's imperative to establish your norms around video conferencing.  Ideally, you want to do this at the beginning of the school year (but it's never too late to start), and continue to do so until it becomes routine.  If you're presenting a short series or just one time, the beginning of the presentation is ideal. Co-constructing norms are excellent for long-term settings, such as classes or a professional learning series.  When you involve your participants, they become more vested and own the learning. Some ideas for norms:
1. Never mandate videos, but always request. The moment you mandate people put their videos on, you will automatically put them on a defensive. However, requesting for people to put their videos on, and explaining why: "Videos help us build our classroom community," "We all miss seeing faces," "Videos allow us to share expressions," "Videos show professionalism," "If we have our cameras on, we appeared ready to learn/engage/participate."
2. Ask people to stay muted until they're ready to speak. This allows for the speaker to have the floor without distracting background noise that other participants may not be able to control.
3. Furnish a daily agenda. If you present an agenda, people know what to expect, and when people know what to expect, they're far more likely to stay in their rational brains. (This is a sample of my daily agenda, which I post to Google Classroom the evening before class.)
4. Offer a weekly/monthly schedule. If this is long-term (such as a class or series of presentations), a weekly or monthly schedule can create clarity, highlight your goals, maintain expectations, and reduce anxiety about "what's coming." (This is a sample of my year-long syllabus.)
5. Utilize the "Hand Raise" Feature. Many virtual programs offer the ability for participants to "Raise Hand."  Explain this feature if you want this to be how your participants can participate.
6. Establish rules around the chatbox.  Be clear about your expectations for the chat. Decide on how you want everyone to use the chatbox and be very clear about it. (More ideas on this below.)
3. Encourage Virtual Backgrounds.  Many video conferencing programs offer the feature to change the virtual background and you could encourage this use to reduce environment self-consciousness, encourage self-expression, and even use it as a way to engage with the lesson.  For example, I change my virtual background to match each new unit I teach.  This allows me to engage with the material, protects the sanctity of my (sometimes) hectic home, and start conversations (when students notice a new background).   This is also a passive way to encourage students to have their cameras on (if they want) because then they can show off their background.   (Here is a link for free Zoom virtual backgrounds.)
4. Utilize the Chatbox.  The chatbox, when focused, can be a great place to create equity of voice.  Some ways to use the chat:
1. The Waterfall: Ask a question and have everyone type it into the chatbox, BUT don't have them press enter until you offer a countdown.  Then, all of the chat will flood in like a "waterfall."  Use this as a point for discussion -- either mention certain responses or encourage participants to comment on each other's responses.
2. The Q&A:  Use the chatbox as the place for Q&A.  Encourage participants to put all of their questions into the chat so that everyone can feel comfortable to find their clarity. Assign a couple of people to be the "Chat Masters" and they can monitor the chat for you to let you know when these questions pop up and you don't have to lose time.
3. The Reflection:  Encourage participants to use the chatbox as a point of reflection. They can answer a directed reflection question, or you can have them fill in blanks with: "I think," "I wonder," "I agree/disagree," etc.
5. Change Your Main Photo. Sometimes it's just not possible for people to have their cameras on.  Ask all participants to at least change their photos to their faces so that there is some humanity attached to the conference.  
6. Have a System for Calling on Participants: To create engagement, it's imperative to be a part of the learning process.  Sometimes people will shut their camera off if they have a gap in skill or capacity, which often may seem like a gap in will.  To help build this capacity, establish a way you plan on having each of your participants be a part of the discussion.  (In any new system, it's imperative you explain it with clear expectations and success criteria.)
1. Volley Technique: The same as you would in person, have participants to call on each other.  In my classes, I give this the name of the "conch" (from Lord of the Flies) and the "ghost." Passing the "conch" is when someone has their hand raised, and passing the "ghost" is when someone does not. (I only recommend "ghosting" in an established community, otherwise, it does not fare well.)
2. Use a Random Name Generator. You can utilize technology, such as Classroomscreen, to input the names of the participants and use that tool to randomly select. Be sure to build community by not using this as a "gotcha" tool, but instead be patient and kind and repeat the question as much as needed in an even tone of voice.
7. Split People into Breakout Rooms: Smaller groups may make it easier and more comfortable for people to participate in conversations.  
1. Give guided questions.
2. Assign specific roles.
3. Set a specific amount of time.
4. Hop in-and-out of the various rooms to offer formative feedback and/or assistance.
8. Be Clear: It seems so simple, but one of the biggest causes of disengagement and self-consciousness is a presenter's lack of clarity.  If they don't understand the directions, the audience may feel unsure about the content and/or their abilities, which leads them to shut down. Being really clear may mean needing to explain a task or concept in multiple ways:
1. Written instructions.
2. Video instructions.
3. Examples and modeling.
4. Videos from OTHER experts.
5. Peer-to-peer modeling.
6. Consistent check-in.
9. Be Open to Feedback:  This year, I established in my daily agenda a few minutes for each class cycle as the "Feedback Few."  This is an allotted time where I allow students to offer ME feedback on how I'm doing and what I can do to make their own learning better.  I established a safe space which also, you guessed it, builds community, to let me know if something I'm doing is not working for them.
1. *IT IS SO IMPORTANT TO RESPOND POSITIVELY TO ALL FEEDBACK!  Negative feedback is crucial and critical to our growth as presenters and educators.  As my favorite athlete, Robin Arzon, says, "I receive the haters. That fuels me. I literally pour it in my bowl of Cheerios in the morning."  While our audience (as students or as professionals) are not going to be "haters," we can still glean the message from Arzon that if we allow feedback to be our fuel and respond to it positively and proactively, we build trust and resilience.
10. Make Opportunities for Creation. Creation requires the highest level of critical thinking, which, in turn, requires the most engagement.  When you ask your audience to create something, you're also asking them to engage in such a way that requires them to explore beyond the scope of regurgitation.  This can be as advanced as project-based learning over the course of time or as simple as a learning activity done with a few people. 
1. For example, one of my favorite activities, when I used to teach 1984 by George Orwell, was to ask my students to write a six-line love poem in the language they're studying (for our school, it's Russian) - no dictionaries or translators allowed.  If they were native speakers, they had to choose the language from middle school. They bellyached and struggled. Then I asked them to share it within their smaller groups. They laughed and grimaced. Then I asked them to figure out my purpose, which, of course, was to illustrate how language constructs thought. I then asked them to take it to the next level and speak in small groups about how it would be for someone who doesn't speak English to try and communicate at various locations (I picked a different place for each group).  In that lesson of creation, there was also cultural competence, empathy, language, diversity, multi-disciplinary connection, but most importantly, everyone needed to be engaged to make it work.  

The main success criteria for this blog is if you glean that building community is the root of establishing all positive environments.  The video conferencing study made me realize that our critical issues for keeping our cameras off are really no different from mentally shutting off when we're in person:  we're self-conscious and we're disengaged.  Building a community with positive relationships can alleviate both.

The Importance of Reflection in Education by Kristen Fusaro-Pizzo

I was 100% the college student who rolled my eyes any time a professor mentioned writing a reflection piece. In fact, there were even points where I was offended by the task: Oh, right, because we're English majors, we have to live in the hippie-dippie world of reflection; that's why everyone makes fun of us. Fast forward to my first and second master's degrees in Education and Educational Leadership: This is why no one respects teachers - because we're too busy "reflecting on our feelings."

I am here to tell you, I was wrong. Not only was I deeply wrong, but I was also childish and arrogant. I made the bitter assumption that reflective practice was not acquiring new learning or innovation. How could I be analyzing, evaluating, and creating if I am busy talking about my feelings? My first mistake was assuming that reflective practice was missing analysis and evaluation; that it was solely feelings-driven.

It was only when I had an ah-ha moment for myself as an educator that I realized the power of reflection, and more so, how I was never actually taught how to properly reflect - which is why I held such disdain for it.

It was my first official 7-12 teaching gig in New York City (I was working part-time at a college prior to it). I was at a K-8 school; I was tasked as the secondary English Language Arts teacher to 150 8th graders - which meant that the students had a primary ELA teacher and were mandated to take two periods (approximately 90 minutes) of ELA per day - one period with her, and one period with me. 

When I was hired, I was literally told my job as the secondary ELA teacher was to "teach test sophistication." The principal explicitly instructed me to teach the students how to take the 8th grade ELA exam. 

I started as a good little soldier. I would give practice multiple choice questions and short writing prompts. I even wrote a Donor's Choose grant* so my students could have their own copies of practice test books. I was doing everything I was told, I couldn't understand why I had kids drawing penises on my desks, stuffing hamburgers into my harddrive, or urinating in my closet. I turned to the primary ELA teacher, who was a veteran, for help.

I quickly learned that all of the instruction I had in my master's program about collaboration would be going into the toilet, as the "primary" ELA teacher had the students doing sustained-silent reading 3-4 days of the week; this was her form of "teaching," as she flipped through Cosmopolitan. By the time the students came to my class, they were wired with energy and bored out of their minds because they had spent the last 45 minutes "reading." 

I threw away everything I was doing and started forming lessons around the books they were reading during their primary ELA class. I had them journaling, discussing, sharing, drawing, presenting. It was a huge difference; I finally was teaching, and while not all of my behavior issues disappeared (more on that in another post), the engagement and vibe made a drastic positive shift. I was proud! I was so proud that when my principal came around for my first unannounced observation in January, I was excited about the follow-up meeting. 

I was thrown for a whirlwind when my principal gave me the biggest verbal thrashing that I had ever had in my life. I was chastised for "not sticking to the instructional goals" for "giving students too much freedom" for "not having control over the curriculum," amongst others that my traumatized brain has hidden away after all these years. 

I didn't back down at that moment. I asked: "But isn't the point to have students learn? They can apply the skills to the exam...". I was cut-off and told she would be back in one week, that I had to submit all of my lesson plans to my assistant principal a week in advance, and the next observation would be formal.

That was the moment it hit me: I was being a reflective educator because I pivoted to do what I knew was best for kids. I used behavioral and anecdotal data (data doesn't always have to be ‘numbers’) and made changes in my practice. 

I wish this story had a happier ending for that school, but by the end of my second year of teaching, I packed everything up that June and started working on my resignation letter. It was by a stroke of good luck and perfect timing that there was an open English position at Staten Island Tech, my current school, and I landed the job there that August. I've been at Tech for the last 12 years and hope for many more.

I know that was a long story to get to the point about reflecting, but that is the reflection: Deconstruct and analyze the process. What went right? What went wrong? Why?

We must first reflect on our own practice as educators. This is hard work. What makes reflection especially hard, despite my initial dismissal of it, is the fact that true reflection must be constant.

As I began my 14th year of teaching this year in this new, remote universe, I realized that this would be the absolute best time to do a deep-dive of my curriculum and process. No better time than this Wild West approach to education to throw away old paradigms and finally make the changes I have been itching to make for years.

You see, (I am going to be bold, brazen, and challenge you here) if you are not questioning your philosophies of teaching, learning, and schooling every few years, you are doing your students a grave disservice. The art of reflection lies in challenging your belief systems to always do what's best for kids, even if that means starting over.



I asked myself these five driving questions:

1. What do I want my students to learn?
2. What do the standards say my students need to learn?
3. How do my students best learn this content and these skills?
4. How can they demonstrate their learning?
5. How can they learn how to improve their learning?

These questions led me in a few different directions. Breaking down each question specific to curriculum design, this was my process:

1. As a college-level course, what are my overarching themes, essential questions, concepts, and content?
2. There are NextGen Standards and Priority Learning Standards; I must marry these two to provide clarity about what specific skills students will need to learn.
3. Who are my students? What types of learners are they? What are their learning styles? What are their identities (culture, gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, etc.)? How do I approach curriculum design and lesson planning to give appeal and purpose for each type of learner?
4. Honoring the differences I discover in question three, how can I create multiple approaches and opportunities for students to demonstrate mastery over content and skills? How could I style and design pathways for student choice and voice to give them ownership over their learning?
5. As crucial as reflection has become for me, I realized reflection was also a necessary skill for my students to learn. I will not always be there to guide them with feedback, but they can always be there for themselves. If they constantly question their learning and practice, they will move from dependent to independent learners.

When teaching reflection to students, it's important to give clarity around what reflection is. This was my problem as an undergraduate; I never understood what it meant for me.


You can start with "The Big Three":

1. What am I learning?
2. Why am I learning it?
3. How will I use what I learned?

"The Big Three," as I call these reflection questions, are the main root questions you can adjust to any content area or grade level. These questions can drive your instruction, as well; imagine what the ideal responses would be to your lessons and design your instruction based on those goals.


Reflection lives in the greatest of all practice. Reflection is progress, not perfection. Reflection is the root of all growth: How can I (it, this, that, whatever pronoun) be better?



To help students move in the direction of reflection, here is a list of guiding questions adopted from the reflection worksheet I share with my high school senior students:

• What have you realized about yourself as a learner?
• What are your learning needs?
• How do you learn best?
• Where do you struggle?
• How did the teacher and/or your classmates help or hinder your learning?
• How did you come to understand your learning process?
• How do you connect with your learning?
• Has it inspired you?
• Has it created passionate responses in you?
• Has it made you question your own beliefs?
• Does it connect with any of your prior knowledge and/or learning experiences?
• How have you deepened your thinking?
• What pieces are you most proud of? What did you enjoy working on the most? Why?
• Where did you feel most engaged? Why?
• Where did you struggle the most? Why? How did you (or how are you) working to overcome that struggle?
• Is there anything you wish you were learning about? Is there anything you’ve learned that you found surprising?
• Did you ever procrastinate? Why? What strategies did you use to work through procrastination?
• Have you made a conference appointment with the teacher? If so, was it helpful or not? Why or why not? If not, why haven’t you made one?
• Have you ever conferred with a classmate? How are peer conferences effective for you?
• Do you use outlines, checklists, or other graphic organizers to assist you in improving your work? How does it help?
• What environment is best for you to learn? How did you come to this realization? How did you use this understanding to make you a better learner?
• Is there anything your teacher(s) have done that you have found to be helpful OR detrimental to your learning? What are those things?

Whether we are practicing reflection ourselves as educators, or teaching our students how to be reflective in their work, we are cultivating resilience. We are training students that reaching our goals requires motivation and discipline - the motivation to try, the discipline to keep trying when we fail, and the reflective combination of both to keep working at something to excel beyond satisfactory.

*This is a referral link.

Patrick Misciagna - The Wonderful World of Hyperdocs

 Peer Collaborative Teacher, Mr. Patrick Misciagna, shares how he uses Hyperdocs to engage students in a Blended Learning Environment.

Access the Video Here

Department of Education Zoom Closed Captioning Update - October 2020

In a roar of anxiety from New York City Department of Education teachers around compliance for students with hearing disabilities, it appears the DOE has finally enabled full closed captioning services in Zoom.  I made a quick video for how you can enable these services.

View Video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/JGVO7ltFrCM