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      • Define: Rubrics
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The Power of Linking Assessments of Problem Solving to Instruction

8/3/2016

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By: Jeff Heyck-Williams

Earlier this summer, I had the pleasure of working with eight amazing teachers from Two Rivers as they developed performance tasks to assess problem solving skills.  Building on the work of Jill Clark, who has been developing our assessments for critical thinking and problem solving for the last couple of years, Kai Blackwood, Helen Gasperetti, Jazmin Heartfield, Kathryn Mancino, Maria Nguyen, Laura Sparks, Mo Thomas, and Julia Tomasko each embarked on a process that culminated in the creation of eight unique assessments of problem solving.  Their tasks spanned the grades from preschool through eighth grade, and crossed all subject areas.  As part of our larger project to assess the transfer of critical thinking and problem solving skills, these assessment tasks were designed to be content neutral and get to the heart of the cognitive skills students need to be effective problem solvers.
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We began this work with a couple of basic assumptions about problem solving.  First, we believe that problem solving is a broadly applicable skill that can be cultivated as a thinking routine across all disciplines.  Second, we believe that we can gain meaningful insight into a student’s ability to apply problem solving skills through short performance tasks.   Building on these assumptions, we tackled the problem of how to create rubrics that defined the construct of problem solving and of how to develop tasks that would provide evidence that students are able to transfer the skill.

What has become clear through the course of this work is the tight connection between assessment, instruction, and learning.  We have been deeply influenced by the work of Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe in their seminal work, Understanding by Design.  So we understood the concept of backwards design and have regularly applied it to our work in building students’ conceptual understanding within our approach to project-based learning.  However, the work of creating assessments of critical thinking and problem solving has shed light on the applicability of backwards design in the development of cognitive skills.  Specifically we have learned the value of defining what we mean by problem solving, of developing tasks that accurately assess that skills, and of teaching students the thinking routines to develop these skills.

DEFINING PROBLEM SOLVING


When we first embarked on this work, we realized the importance of defining what critical thinking and problem solving look like in student work. Teachers needed concrete examples of how to make problem solving come to life in the classroom and for students to truly develop problem solving skills.
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With this in mind and building on the work of Catalina Foothills School District in Arizona and Laura Greenstein’s work in Assessing 21st Century Skills, we created a general rubric of problem solving.  Through use in classrooms and multiple revisions, we have attempted to define problem solving by identifying five separate core components of the problem solving process: 1. Identifying what Is Known About a Problem; 2. Defining the Problem; 3. Generating Possible Solution Strategies; 4. Applying Problem-Solving Steps; and 5. Evaluating Solutions.

This rubric has given a definition for teachers to explore what problem solving can look like in their classroom.  More importantly, it provides concrete language around which to talk to students about how they can improve their problem solving skills.


DEVELOPING TASKS THAT ASSESS PROBLEM SOLVING


However, simply defining the construct of problem solving for teachers and students isn’t enough to help them see how it can live and develop in their work.  By creating tasks that assess problem solving, teachers deconstructed our definition as they applied it to the work of their students.  They recognized that students problem solve all of the time, but uncovering how they used the components in their problem solving was less clear.
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​By creating content neutral tasks and then defining the right sets of questions that would elicit evidence of student thinking, teachers began to understand how they could help students get better at thinking through a problem by highlighting how they approached each component defined in our rubric.  We realized early on that each component of the rubric needed specific language that would point to specific “look fors” as evidence that students were accomplishing that step in the process effectively.  Then in response to each of those components, teachers needed to ask targeted questions that would uncover student thinking related to those “look fors.”  For example, when determining whether or not a student is accomplished in “Generating Possible Solution Strategies,” we have to ask the student to explain not only what strategy they will use, but what steps they will use to implement the strategy.  Without that specific cue, we may not elicit much evidence about whether or not students can effectively generate solution steps.


Thus the creation of tasks that assess problem solving allowed teachers to have a clear and consistent understanding both of what we mean by problem solving but also what problem solving can look like in student work.  It gives the teachers a clear target at which to aim as they plan experiences for students that will develop their problem solving skills.  


TEACHING STUDENTS THINKING ROUTINES


What was most clear through this work was the importance of making thinking visible.  If we are not able to see and to hear what students are thinking either through writing or their verbal comments, then we are not able to assess where they are in their thinking or to provide them with quality feedback to improve their thinking.


Thus we have worked closely with the ideas of Ron Ritchhart, Mark Church, and Karin Morrison in their book Making Thinking Visible.  Specifically we have seen the power of developing common thinking routines in our classrooms and across our school that allow students to develop consistent approaches to critical thinking and problem solving.  By having clear but adaptable components of problem solving for example, students are able to effectively work through each component improving their overall approach to solving problems in the future.  


With problem solving, we use a K-W-I structure adapted from Linda Torp and Sara Sage’s Problems as Possibilities: Problem-Based Learning for K-16 Education.  Applying this structure in classes from math and science to larger projects, students identify what is KNOWN about the problem,  WHAT they need to find out, and IDEAS for solutions.  Each of these components map directly back to three of the components of our problem solving rubric.  By reinforcing the K-W-I as a regular thinking routine, the structure becomes a habit of mind that students draw upon whenever they are faced with a problem, even when they are not explicitly asked to fill out a K-W-I chart.  Thus the thinking routine transfers to any setting and any problem that the student will face in and out of school.      


LINKING ASSESSMENTS OF PROBLEM SOLVING TO INSTRUCTION


Planning backwards from first defining problem solving, to developing assessment tasks, and finally to teaching regular thinking routines, we are building a system which supports the development of broadly applicable cognitive skills which can be applied to any situation or problem.  Working with teachers this summer has emphasized the importance of keeping this assessment work closely tied to instruction because ultimately the goal is not to develop another set of assessments, but to have all students leave us as effective critical thinkers and problem solvers.
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Assessing the Transfer of Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills

6/3/2016

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By: Jeff Heyck-Williams

​Two Rivers Public Charter School in Washington, DC is a network of EL Education schools serving over 700 students in preschool through 8th grade.  Throughout our twelve-year history, we have continued to champion the importance of embracing a broader definition of student success than what has been handed to us by state and national policy.  While we believe that it is essential for all students to be proficient in math, literacy, and the sciences, we believe that that is not enough.  Students also need a rich set of social and cognitive skills that span beyond any given discipline.  
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Furthermore, we believe that we can best teach students these skills through hands-on interdisciplinary project-based learning.  As EL Education schools, our projects are defined as expeditions lasting 10 to 12 weeks in which students tackle messy, real world problems that don’t have easy paths to solutions nor do they have one clear right answer.  Through intentional design of these projects, teachers address the core content and basic skills defined by literacy and content standards; the social skills of collaboration and communication; the intrapersonal skills defined by character; and the broadly applicable cognitive skills of critical thinking and problem solving. 
 
In the life of our schools, we have seen the powerful way that our students through project-based learning have embraced deeper learning outcomes, and exhibited the habits of effective critical thinking, collaboration, and personal character.   However, our evidence that this is working is only found in anecdotes and in the quality of student work.  We have been unable to demonstrate neither the degree to which students are developing these skills within projects nor their ability to transfer the skills beyond the context of the current project.
 
Focusing just on the dimensions of critical thinking and problem solving, our teachers expressed frustration at not knowing in concrete terms what those cognitive skills looked like when students exhibited them.  Building on our understanding of the essential role that assessment for learning plays in the learning process and the very practical consideration of how we help teachers and students define and work towards developing these skills, we have embarked on a multi-year project to define and assess critical thinking and problem solving.    
 
Critical thinking and problem solving, as we define it, are the set of non-discipline specific cognitive skills people use to analyze vast amounts of information and creatively solve problems.  We have broken those skills down into these five core components:
  1. ​Schema Development: The ability to learn vast amounts of information and organize it in ways that are useful for understanding
  2. Metacognition and Evaluation: The ability to think critically about what one is doing and evaluate many potential choices
  3. Effective Reasoning: The ability to create claims and support them with logical evidence
  4. Problem Solving: The ability to identify the key questions in a problem, develop possible paths to a solution, and follow through with a solution
  5. Creativity and Innovation: The ability to formulate new ideas that are useful within a particular context

Our project is working to create learning progressions in each of these core components with accompanying rubrics.  The progressions of learning and rubrics will both help define for students and teachers the skills that all students should be developing as well as function as evaluative tools to provide a picture where each student sits in the development of these skills and what are the next steps for further learning.
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However, we believe it is not enough for students to be able to develop these skills within the highly scaffolded context of our expeditions.  If they have truly learned the skills, they should have the ability to transfer them.  With this in mind, we are working to create short content-neutral performance tasks that will give teachers and students valuable information about each of the five core components listed above.  Our hypothesis is that through having students tackle short novel tasks, we will be able to draw clear conclusions about their learning of critical thinking and problem solving skills.

Through the course of this work, we hope that our process will be useful to other educators interested in achieving deeper learning outcomes for their students.  We realize that deeper learning will not become a reality in most schools until teachers and leaders have a clear vision for what it looks like on a day-to-day basis and how we can clearly demonstrate student growth in these essential skills.  We hope that our work will help to inform how to make deeper learning a concrete reality.  It is a work in progress, and we invite you to share your thoughts and follow our progress at our website www.LearnwithTwoRivers.org. 
 
This work has been funded by generous grants from CityBridge Foundation and Next Generation Learning Challenge’s (NGLC) Breakthrough Schools: DC, the Center for Innovation in Education (CIE) and NGLC’s Assessment for Learning Project, and New Schools Venture Fund
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Learn Better Together: Collaboration at the Heart of Learning 

3/18/2016

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By: Jeff Heyck-Williams

One of the big buzzwords in education reform at the moment is personalized learning.  While the term means lots of different things to lots of different people, my first introduction to the idea was at schools where personalized learning meant large rooms with kids in front of computers working on their own individualized playlists near each other but not really interacting.  I have come to appreciate that personalized learning can be much more than what these students experience.  At its best, personalized learning is learning experiences defined by a deep understanding of each learner’s profile, multiple paths to the same common goals of student success, and flexibility with the pace at which learners demonstrate mastery.  A vision for schools that we should all be striving towards.
 
However, that initial experience with students spending large parts of their day working on computers on individualized playlists has given me pause.  It has given me pause because in our effort to personalize learning, we have lost sight of what is core to the learning experience.  As both renowned educational philosopher, John Dewey, and developmental psychologist, Lev Vygotsky, have suggested, learning is a social activity.  However, in the name of personalized learning, students are not interacting around the content that they are learning, and thus they are losing the greatest benefit of a school, the learning community.
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At Two Rivers one of our core values states that we “Learn Better Together.”  We believe that our work is improved by considering multiple perspectives and making meaning together.   
 
There are a few practical implications to this core value.  First, students need to have meaningful experiences and dialogue about what they are learning if we want them to develop deep and lasting understanding of concepts.  This is why we work collaboratively in discussing literature, solving math problems, and developing projects. 
 
Secondly, we aren’t so naïve as to think that students already know how to work collaboratively together.  Rather we recognize that collaboration is a life-skill that must be taught and nurtured over time.  For this reason, we spend time teaching students how to work together to solve problems.
 
Finally, we believe that collaboration cannot best be mediated through a screen.  While technology affords new ways to collaborate over space and time, we continue to have a need for face-to-face human interactions.  Students learn to read social cues and develop deeper collaboration and communication skills only through day-to-day personal connection with other people.
 
In our rush to grab onto the next thing and actualize it in our schools, I hope that we don’t forget the central role of collaboration and social interaction in learning.  While I am all in favor of personalized learning, it cannot be implemented at the expense of personal connections in the learning process.   
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Defining Curriculum 

3/2/2016

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By: Jeff Heyck-Williams
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THE QUESTION 

What is Two Rivers’ curriculum?  

A few years ago, a parent approached me with this seemingly simple (albeit essential) question - a question that I should be able to answer quickly without much thought.  My title, after all, is Director of Curriculum and Instruction, and creating and coordinating Two Rivers’ curriculum is a core component of my work.  However, as with many simple questions, the question gave me pause.  

It gave me pause for three major reasons.  
 
First, it gave me pause because in the way that it was asked, it begged for a quick sound bite response, but I realized there was too much complexity wrapped in the word “curriculum” to give a quick, simple one to two sentence answer.  
 
Secondly, I made an assumption (probably unfairly) that the parent was asking about a textbook series that I patently would not describe as a curriculum.  Too often, textbook series and/or standards are referred to as the whole of a curriculum.  However, I think of textbooks and the accompanying materials as tools that help us define and deliver the curriculum.  They are not the curriculum itself.  
 
Finally, the question gave me pause because here was a word, curriculum, that sits at the heart of what I do everyday and that I use pretty freely in multiple ways, and yet I didn’t have a clear definition of the word.  In fact, because I use the word curriculum in so many different ways to mean often very different things, I shouldn’t have been surprised that I didn’t have a clear definition.  But if I wanted to have a chance of defining Two Rivers’ curriculum for this parent or for anyone, for that matter, I needed to resolve the question of just what curriculum is first.  


SO WHAT IS CURRICULUM?

The single best definition of curriculum that I have found is from John Fairhurst Kerr’s seminal work Changing the Curriculum from 1968.  Kerr writes that curriculum is, “all the learning which is planned and guided by the school, whether it is carried out in groups or individually, inside or outside the school.”  What I love about this definition of curriculum is that it has three core ideas which I feel are essential to understanding exactly what curriculum is.  
 
To begin, Kerr defines curriculum as “all of the learning.”  This is helpful in explaining why a list of standards can never be the curriculum with a capital “C” for a school.  Schools always teach and address learning that stretches beyond the bounds of a set of performance standards.  
 
The second part of the definition, “which is planned and guided by the school,” can’t be over emphasized.  With that simple phrase, Kerr has highlighted the intentional nature of curriculum.  There are many definitions of curriculum floating around, but when I talk about curriculum I am not talking about learning that occurs unintentionally.  For example, students often come to school and learn the lyrics to the latest rap song from their friends.  This is learning, but we don’t seek to impart all of the learning that occurs in schools.  Rather, when I am thinking about curriculum, I am thinking about all the learning that as a school we intend to teach towards.  It is this intentionality of learning outcomes that I would want to convey in answering any questions about Two Rivers’ curriculum.  
 
Finally, Kerr ends his definition with, “...whether it is carried out in groups or individually, inside or outside the school.”  Pairing this idea with the previous ideas of the intentional learning outcomes, we have a full vision for curriculum that includes but stretches beyond individual standardized test measures as well as the confines of any classroom.  
 
That is to say that with great intentionality, we attempt to craft experiences for students that nurture their growth as life-long learners from the moment they are first greeted with eye-contact and a smile as they approach our doors on their first day of school all the way through to the moment that they walk out of our doors for the last time as students and graduate at the end of eighth grade.  That is to say, we recognize in addition to the classrooms that the hallway, playground, community spaces, and lobbies are all equally places of learning.     
 

TWO RIVERS CURRICULUM

In answer to the question, I would say that Two Rivers curriculum is defined by an expanded set of outcomes that includes core content and basic skills, but also embraces a broader definition of success that includes critical thinking and problem solving, character, and collaboration and communication.  These outcomes are realized by a rich variety of experiences planned intentionally and facilitated by talented educators.  So while we don’t use a particular textbook, we do provide opportunities for students to have rich and varied experiences that prepare them to become life-long learners.  
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Living the Mission at Two Rivers Public Charter School: Defining an Educational Philosophy for the 21st Century

11/2/2015

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By: Jeff Heyck-Williams





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​The Two Rivers Public Charter School Mission


To nurture a diverse group of students to become lifelong, active participants in their own education, develop a sense of self and community, and become responsible and compassionate members of society.
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Written above is the mission of our school. We share the mission at every parent event. We read the mission at the start of every professional development session that we run with staff. The mission is printed and prominent in every classroom. We often say we are a mission-driven school and the words of our mission are somewhat ubiquitous in the life our school.

But what does it mean?


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Two Rivers Public Charter School's mission is to nurture a diverse group of students to become lifelong, active participants in their own education, develop a sense of self and community, and become responsible and compassionate members of society.
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