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ASHLAND SCHOOL DISTRICT Teaching with intention Keeping Learning on Track program helps Ashland teachers identify students who need extra help Comment By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings DailyTidings.com By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings Posted Sep. 3, 2015 at 8:55 PM By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings Posted Sep. 3, 2015 at 8:55 PM » Social News It’s called the Popsicle stick game. The teacher asks each student to write their name on a Popsicle stick then collects the tiny wooden name tags. Then the real fun begins. The teacher asks a question from the day’s lesson, gives the students a few moments to ponder then pulls a Popsicle stick at random. If he grabs your stick, you better know the answer. Not because you’ll be marked down or sent to the principal’s office. No, the driving motivation in the Popsicle stick game is good old-fashioned peer pressure. Nobody wants to look like an idiot in front of their classmates. “I tried that once and it was just a horrific failure,” Ashland Middle School math teacher Eric Sandrock said. “I felt bad for the kids. You could tell as soon as you called on them: ‘Oh my God, he called on me.’ It’s hard on middle-school kids. I thought, ‘I’ve got to find a way to make this easy for me and easy for them, but also very, very complete.’” Putting to work the techniques gleaned from a program called “Keeping Learning on Track,” Sandrock and a growing number of his colleagues in the Ashland School District did find another way. It involves measuring consistently — several times per class period, generally — and deliberately how well each student is retaining lessons, then using the information acquired from those “formative assessments” to identify students who are struggling. Finally, teachers trained in the KLT method will use targeted interventions, such as after-school study sessions, to get those students back up to speed, thereby catching stragglers before they bomb a major test without having to resort to less precise, more intrusive strategies such as pop quizzes and the Popsicle stick game. “It means in the moment, in the classroom, you are intentionally asking questions or doing a short snippet activity to instantly know which students are getting it and which students are not, so that you can immediately adjust what you’re doing to address those needs,” explains AMS math teacher Jennifer Losinski, who was one of the district’s original KLT leaders, teachers who agreed to attend a three-day workshop and share what they learned with other teachers. “If you know what you want your students to accomplish in a lesson, you try to plan ahead of time — 'I’m going to ask this question here' or 'I’m going to have them do this activity' — so that you can intentionally do it and it’s not happenstance.” “It makes you so deliberate about your practice,” Sandrock added, “instead of your content.” The program was originally introduced to ASD four years ago through the Southern Oregon Education Service District which, with an eye toward the-then-soon-to-be-implemented Common Core requirements, was looking for professional development opportunities to support Southern Oregon teachers. The teachers who volunteered to sign up attended three all-day KLT sessions, then hosted seminars aimed at recruiting teachers who would then, along with the trainers, roll out the program in their classrooms. At its inception in Ashland, only middle school and high school teachers were approached, but this year Walker Elementary has two KLT leaders — fourth-grade teacher Jennifer Parks and second- and third-grade teacher Amanda Dallas. The district’s other KLT leaders are Marina Borowy, a Spanish teacher at AMS, and Nancy Martin, a humanities teacher at AHS. Each leader heads up a group of roughly four to eight teachers. Teachers who agree to take part in the KLT program must commit to meeting with the other teachers in their specific group once a month for two years. The meetings are crucial, Sandrock said, because that’s where they review what techniques they employed, what worked and what didn’t. “It’s not like we sat down for two hours and had a gabfest,” he said. “It was like, ‘OK, everybody, we’ve got to fill out this thing, we’ve got to do our how’s-it-going writing, we’ve got to do our action plan, we’ve got to do our review.’ And the summer stuff is intense, hours and hours of readings, and really thinking about what you were going to be doing in the classroom next year — not in terms of content but in terms of, 'how am I going to set things up and continue this process so that everything just gets better next year?'” So, what exactly is a “formative assessment,” and what does it look like in practice? It’s been described by the ESD as “student-centered, in-the-moment teaching and learning techniques” which is not bound by either the subject or the grade level. Basically, it’s about constantly evaluating how well students are absorbing lessons and adjusting on the fly, before it’s too late. Many of the techniques, says Sandrock, were used by good teachers before somebody came up with a name for it. But KLT introduces teachers to the philosophy in full, equipping them with dozens of ways to assess students. One way teachers do this is to design and ask “diagnostic questions” — that is, questions that present students with the general concept of the lesson as well as some common misconception and a correct solution. These questions are presented about midway through a lesson, and students are then asked to write their answer on a small dry-erase board (they each have one) then hold the boards up facing the teacher. “Then I can scan the classroom quickly and see which students have it and which students are picking the most common misconception,” Losinski said. “Then we can instantly address and have a conversation in the classroom about, ‘Why might a student do this,’ or, ‘Can anybody identify the error in this strategy?’” What kind of impact has KLT had in the classroom? That’s almost impossible to quantify, but Sandrock has no doubt that the program’s techniques have helped several of his students avoid potential pitfalls in their education, simply because their struggles were quickly identified and dealt with. One of Ashland’s four original KLT trainers, Sandrock devised his own formative assessment technique of walking around his classroom, asking questions, listening. Using “the walk-around,” Sandrock could zero in on the students who weren’t up to speed. And some of those who were struggling, he realized, were very good at hiding their woes. “Because a lot of times you think kids know what’s going on,” he said, “but they really don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t really understand it; they’re just able to do it because you just showed them how to do it.” By walking around his class and keeping track of what he discovered in a notebook, Sandrock says, he was able to spot students who desperately needed an “intervention” — extra tutoring, either before or after school. “I can think of three kids right off the top of my head who all struggled,” Sandrock said, “and they had become pretty good at hiding the fact that they were struggling…. So I gave them targeted interventions and all three of them came in on a regular basis. Initially, we were looking at Cs and Ds, and by the time the end of the year rolled around they were all getting Bs.” Eventually, added Sandrock, there was no stigma attached to coming in before school or after school to get that extra help. That was just part of the process, the new normal. That attitude itself is a game-changer, and one of the key tenets of the program. “The phrase that the KLT program encourages is ‘activating students as owners of their own learning,’” Losinski said. “That’s why I was so excited to participate, because it brings you all together for that purpose of learning and it’s equally on the teachers and the students. And, it really builds a community in the classroom that we’re here to learn and not make judgments about who’s not getting it and who’s struggling.” Joe Zavala can be reached at 541-821-0829 or [email protected]. By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings DailyTidings.com By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings Posted Sep. 3, 2015 at 8:55 PM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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