"Look it up in your notes," I told students when they asked me for information that either I had already given them or they had found on their own. "You're the teacher. You're supposed to answer our questions," students responded.

"The answers to those questions should be in your notes." I replied. But many students didn't take notes. And most students who did take notes were too irresponsible or disorganized to benefit from them. Some kids took notes one day, but didn't bring them to class the following day. Others, meanwhile, brought their notes to class but couldn't find information when they needed it. Sometimes this was because they used the same notebook for more than one class. Other times it was because they didn't use a notebook, and instead crammed their papers into folders. Then there were those kids who filed school work in their pockets--it wasn't the dog that ate their papers; it was the washing machine.

High school students not taking or using notes--how infuriating! But after confronting students about this for months, I realized it wasn't their fault. They weren't unmotivated or incapable. They just hadn't learned how to take, organize, and use notes.

I thus introduced students to Concept Cards, a one card, one concept note-taking system where students write the name of a concept on the blank side of a 4 x 6 index card and related information on the lined side. They then punch a hole in the upper corner of each card (or, better yet, punch holes ahead of time) so that they can keep their cards together with a 2" loose leaf ring.

My students responded to Concept Cards even better than I expected. The information on each card was the same as it would have been had students used notebooks, but the presentation and organization were different. Concept Cards provided students a compact, hard to lose (some students clipped their Concept Card rings onto three-ring binder rings), unlikely to be laundered, and distinct set of notes for my class. Some students found Concept Cards so helpful that they made separate sets of cards for other classes.

I'll share in a future post some tips for maximizing the benefits students get from Concept Cards. For now, consider including index cards and loose leaf rings in your supplies budget for next year. Or consider digital alternatives such as Easy Notecards (which is free), depending on your students' access to technology. There are lots of note-taking apps too--any recommendations?

One final point: I am not advocating here for more lecturing. But students need to store, retrieve, and use information efficiently no matter how they acquire it. And that's what Concept Cards helped my students do. I know this from what I saw and from what students told me:

"I couldn't do the work but then I started looking on my cards and getting the answer from my cards."

"I put myself to the test by studying my cards, and raised my grade."

Image by GECC, with permission

Posted by David Ginsburg at 8:15 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The dropout rate at Chicago's Manley High School was over 60% when I taught there, and even higher for males. Yet Rodney Wilson (not his real name) made it to graduation, and his family and friends roared as he received his diploma. No one was louder or prouder than Rodney's girlfriend, Nicole (not her real name), who would graduate from Manley the following year.

I asked Nicole early in her senior year how Rodney was doing. "He's alright," Nicole said, but her face said otherwise. "Is he in school?" I asked. "Not yet," Nicole replied. "He applied to Malcolm X (one of the City Colleges of Chicago) and is planning to go there next year."

"Sounds good. Is he working now?" I replied. "You might say that," Nicole said, telling me everything I needed to know. Rodney's "job" wasn't in an office or restaurant or factory. High school graduate Rodney was doing the same thing he would have been doing had he been high school dropout Rodney: selling drugs on the street corner.

Wish I could say Rodney's story was an isolated case, but a high school diploma is a ticket to nowhere for many urban kids. Kids who get into college but can't stay in. Kids who get jobs but can't hold onto them. Kids who, like Rodney, learn the hard way that graduating isn't all that different from dropping out.

So, how could students do what they need to do to graduate high school, but fall apart afterward? Simple, what they need to do to graduate high school is nothing like what they'll need to do in college or the workplace. In fact, for many urban youth, K-12 success is a set-up for post-secondary failure.

And a big reason for this, as I've written before, is that urban schools often teach students (or reinforce in them) self-defeating behavior. Martin Haberman also wrote about this in his article, Unemployment Training: The Ideology of Non-Work Learned in Urban Schools:

Urban youth are not simply ill prepared for work but systematically and carefully trained to be quitters, failures, and the discouraged workers who no longer even seek employment... The dropout problem among urban youth--as catastrophic as it is--is less detrimental than this active training for unemployment. We need be more concerned for "successful" youth who graduate since it is they who have been most seriously infected. They have been exposed longest, practiced the anti-work behaviors for the longest period, and been rewarded most. In effect, the urban schools create a pool of youth much larger than the number of dropouts who we have labeled as "successful" but who have been more carefully schooled for failure.

Haberman went on to describe the beliefs and behaviors that make up the ideology of non-work. It's a provocative piece, which I ask urban educators to read and discuss when I help them take ownership of students' failures rather than blame poverty, parents, policies, or other outside factors. Read Haberman's article if you work with urban youth, and reflect on what you may be doing to set them up for post-secondary failure--just as I was doing until I realized it and made some of the changes I've shared on this blog (Non-Academic Skills category).

Another graduation season is here, and it should be a time for celebration. But for me it's a reminder of kids like Rodney--who never did enroll at Malcolm X--and Nicole whose pride in Rodney at graduation was replaced by shame two months later. I've had the privilege of working with several urban schools whose graduates are prepared for college and work. But you won't see me celebrating until that's the case with all urban schools.

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Posted by David Ginsburg at 3:14 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

"Stop the madness for constant group work." said author Susan Cain in her recent TED Talk, The Power of Introverts. "We need to be teaching kids to work together, for sure. But we also need to be teaching them how to work on their own because that is where deep thought comes from." (Check out Cain's talk--it's enlightening and inspiring.)

I agree with Cain, which may seem like I'm contradicting myself, since teamwork is the "t" in my "success comes from the H.E.A.R.T." acronym. But the "r" in H.E.A.R.T. is resourcefulness, which provides the link between students working on their own and working together.

At teacher workshops on small groups, I stress the importance of students working independently first, interdependently second. Establish a protocol for students to rely on their own knowledge, creativity, and resources when they first approach a task. Advise them to collaborate or consult with each other only after they've exhausted their own ideas and resources, or have completed a task and are ready to discuss what they did.

Another point I make at workshops is that we should facilitate collaboration rather than force it. We need to teach students to work together, as Susan Cain says. But forcing introverted kids to work together doesn't teach them to work together. It teaches them to resent and avoid situations where they're required to work together. If students insist on sitting by themselves, let them. Then encourage them to reach out to classmates as situations arise where this would benefit them. When group-averse kids ask for help, I point out a classmate who can help them. And more often than not, they're willing to approach that classmate (sometimes with me escorting them, sometimes on their own).

Even better, most of these students sit with a group from then on. Not because anyone forces them to, but because they realize it's a win-win: get and give help when it's needed, otherwise work on your own. It's a balanced approach that cultivates two important skills, working independently and interdependently, in all kids--introverts and extroverts alike.

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Posted by David Ginsburg at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

"I'm returning your tests, but don't look at them yet. Keep working on today's assignment."

I've heard many teachers, including me, make requests like this, and then return students' tests--face down, of course. Yet rather than comply, students compare or complain. Compare scores: "I got an 85. What did you get?" And compare answers, which is when the complaining begins: "Coach G, how come you took points off for me on #7? I had the same thing as Justin and he got credit. That's not fair!"

So much for students working on today's assignment--and good luck getting them to refocus on it. But who can blame them? It's human nature to check the results of something important to you the moment they're available. (Sports fans, how long can you resist checking how your team is doing?) There's no way around it: pass back a test--or any graded activity, for that matter--and students are going to drop everything to see how they did, talk to each other about how they did, and confront you on how they did.

So, when should you return tests, quizzes, or other graded papers? Depends. Sometimes it's better to do it early in the class period--after a Do Now or other opening activity--especially if you think students will have trouble concentrating until they see their papers. Other times it may be less distracting or disruptive if you do it toward the end of class. What matters most is that you return graded papers when you're willing to let students give those papers their undivided attention, since that's what they're going to do anyway.

I'm all for efficiency in the classroom, so it's great if you can sneak in an administrative task while students are doing something that requires little or no supervision. But returning tests to students is one task where efficiency can lead to inefficiency.

Image by GECC, with permission

Posted by David Ginsburg at 1:14 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Just hearing the F word can cause kids (adults too) to freak out. And if you think about it, there are lots of reasons students feel flummoxed by fractions. For one thing, there's the misleading vocabulary, as when we reduce a fraction to lowest terms even though it doesn't involve a reduction in value. Or when we call a fraction "improper" just because its value is greater than one.

Then there are apparent inconsistencies between arithmetic with natural numbers and arithmetic with fractions. Multiplying 10 by 5, for example, increases the value from 10 to 50. But multiply 10 by 1/5, and you end up with only 2. Conversely, whereas dividing 10 by 2 yields a smaller number (5), 10 divided by 1/2 results in a larger number (20).

Yet as confusing as fraction arithmetic can be, a lot of this confusion can be prevented if students have a conceptual understanding of fractions before teachers target procedural understanding. In elementary school, students need to interact with concrete representations of fractions until they can see the effects of operations involving fractions. In other words, teachers need to develop students' understanding of fractions using manipulatives--actual and/or virtual (National Library of Virtual Manipulatives is an awesome--and free--site).

Unfortunately, for various reasons--such as lack of training and lack of time (gotta get through the curriculum before the test)--elementary teachers often move on to abstract/algorithmic treatment of fractions before students grasp them concretely/conceptually. They then cross their fingers hoping students will remember to flip and multiply, not add denominators, etc. on the test.

But even when students remember what to do on the test, many of them forget afterward. And though some students memorize procedures for good, they often don't understand or think about what they're doing. Instead, they just apply algorithms. Take, for example, problems where students have to place fractions such as 3/4, 1/2, 2/3, and 4/5 in order from least to greatest. Some students will convert to a common denominator, while others may go with decimals. But few of them--even high school students--will take a more analytical approach unless we model/facilitate this for them. Just asking, "So would you rather make three out of every four free throws or one out of every two or...?" (or you can go with other contexts such as money) can be enough for light bulbs to go on for many kids.

Asking students questions like this and providing them quality instruction and practice using manipulatives can help them nail one of the most dreaded math topics. And when they do, I often hear teachers use the F word: fantastic!

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Posted by David Ginsburg at 7:00 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A lot of teachers give students participation points for speaking up during class discussions. The more students contribute, the more points they get.

I've heard teachers say this motivates students, and it does seem to motivate some of them--those who need or want to improve their grades. But participation points can be de-motivating for students who aren't concerned about their grades. As a result, some students dominate class discussions, while others daydream during them.

Another problem is that saying a lot doesn't always equate to learning a lot. A higher order skill like synthesizing information, for example, is all about processing information rather than providing it--in other words, listening rather than speaking.

Unfortunately, the more some students speak, the less they listen. Sometimes they're so preoccupied with crafting or rehearsing in their minds what they're going to say that they end up repeating what a classmate already said. And students aren't the only ones whose listening skills suffer when teachers dole out participation points. Keeping a running tally--on a laptop, tablet, or clipboard--of students' contributions can be so distracting for teachers that they don't hear everything students say.

And listening isn't only important when it comes to learning, but also to leading, as Bernard Ferrari asserts in his recent McKinsey Quarterly article, The Executive's Guide to Better Listening:

Throughout my career, I've observed that good listeners tend to make better decisions, based on better-informed judgments, than ordinary or poor listeners do--and hence tend to be better leaders. By showing respect to our conversation partners, remaining quiet so they can speak, and actively opening ourselves up to facts that undermine our beliefs, we can all better cultivate this valuable skill.

I agree, and there's no more important place to cultivate this skill than school, especially since students do a lot of things outside of school that can detract from listening. And it's not just students, as my wife and kids point out whenever I'm tweeting while they're talking.

How, then, can you cultivate students' listening skills? First of all, model those skills yourself. Give students your undivided attention--again, hard to do when you're entering participation points on a laptop or tablet. And show students you're listening by validating their comments--not by agreeing with them, but by repeating in your own words what they say. (It's also great to then ask students to do this.)

Also be sure to use teaching techniques that provide students equal opportunities to express themselves, and encourage them to listen to each other and you. Think-pair-share and cold calling are two such techniques.

But whatever you do, forget about giving students participation points for contributing to class discussions. Sure it's important for kids to speak up, but they'll never learn or lead to their potential if they're talking when they should be listening or not listening when others are talking.

Let me know what you think. I'll be all ears.

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Posted by David Ginsburg at 10:32 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

It's fine to encourage students to speak up by telling them there are no stupid questions. Yet students' willingness to ask questions has less to do with us encouraging them to do so than how we respond when they actually do ask questions.

Unfortunately, teachers often respond to questions in ways that deter students from asking more questions. Sometimes we do this by dismissing or barely answering their questions because "we need to move on." Other times we do it more subtly through responses that would seem to encourage students to ask questions, such as "great question."

How could a positive comment like "great question" deter students from asking questions? Simple. If some questions are great, then by implication others are not great. And it's inevitable that kids will be reluctant to ask questions if they think their questions may not elicit our praise. From their perspective, then, there are indeed stupid questions.

A better approach involves reinforcing the act of asking a question, regardless how profound or simple a question may be. Rather than respond to students using evaluative words such as "great," express gratitude to them for asking a question. A quick "thanks for your question" validates students, and supports the notion that there are no stupid questions. (You can always follow up later with private praise for students whose questions strike you as particularly thoughtful.)

My point here doesn't just apply to students asking questions, but also to answering them. It's important to avoid affirming students only when we agree with their answers, especially when there isn't necessarily one right answer--such as when teachers ask students to predict, infer, or interpret while discussing literature.

All too often, however, we convey to students that there is just one right answer. At times we do this overtly, as when a teacher asked students what they thought the motivation was behind a character's behavior. When a student said "love," the teacher said "I disagree." When another student then said "jealousy," the teacher said "exactly." Sometimes it's not just our words but our intonation--"Really?!" Other times it's not our words at all, but our raised eyebrows or other gestures. And again, sometimes we may deter students in subtle ways. I recall a teacher telling a student, "Great prediction," and then saying to another student, "Hmmm, so you think she is going to accept the job."

The solution, as it is for responding to students' questions, is to respond to students' thoughts gratefully yet neutrally. At the same time, it's not always in the class' best interest to say "thanks for sharing" and move on to another student or the next part of the discussion. But by first acknowledging students for sharing, we can then push the discussion to a more meaningful level. This may involve asking students to back up their answers by referring to the text. Or it may mean facilitating debate by asking students to react to each others' thoughts--which can be far more constructive than us reacting to their thoughts.

For students to learn to their potential, they need to feel free to ask questions and share their thoughts. And they'll never feel such freedom unless we as educators value their input rather than just evaluate it.

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Posted by David Ginsburg at 8:56 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

My first teaching experience was as a substitute teacher in Chicago assigned to an 11th grade Algebra 2 class for ELL Polish students. I began by giving students an assignment their teacher had left for them. But no one attempted it, so I asked a boy who understood English if he and his classmates needed help. He laughed and, after he translated my question for his classmates, they laughed too. He then let me in on the joke: "We learned this in 7th grade."

To me, however, it was appalling rather than amusing: 11th grade here = 7th grade there?! Yet what I later discovered was even more appalling: 11th grade here = 9th grade here. In fact, Algebra 2 was such a rehash of the district's Algebra 1 course that some teachers called it "Algebra T-o-o." And really, the same point could be made about math curriculum as a whole in the U.S., since most content for any given year is a review of content from previous years. (The Common Core State Standards may help change this, but I'll believe it when I see it.)

This approach, where we touch on lots of topics each year--rather than go deep with fewer topics--and then revisit them in subsequent years is often called spiraling. But what it is for many students is stifling. And this is as true for kids who've yet to master a skill as it is for those who nailed it right away. I first noticed this when I taught 9th grade Algebra classes where every student was performing at least two years below grade level.

"Meet them where they are," fellow math teachers advised me. Makes sense, I thought, since I couldn't imagine teaching Algebra to kids who didn't know basic arithmetic. But what I soon learned is that perception matters more to students than performance. For many kids, having seen something is akin to having learned something. "Man, we already know this," students said, as I presented lesson after lesson on fractions, decimals, and percents.

Other students, meanwhile, knew they didn't understand the material, but had given up hope of ever understanding it. The implication was therefore the same for all students: encore presentations on previous years' topics were pointless. And though I was able to engage a few students when I found new ways to present old topics, one group of students was always slighted: those who really did "already know this."

I've seen this same scene play out in dozens of math classes: teachers presenting material as though students had never seen it when they had actually seen it early and often. Consider, for example, area and perimeter, which students are first exposed to in third or fourth grade, and see again in middle school. Yet when area and perimeter come up in high school, most teachers--including me at first--teach them from scratch.

The problem, of course, goes back to the disconnect between kids seeing something and actually learning--and retaining--it. But if it didn't sink in for them the first, second, or third time a teacher presented it, why should we present it again?

We shouldn't. At some point the focus needs to be on students practicing math rather than teachers presenting it. And to me, that point begins right after students are first introduced to a concept or skill and continues for the rest of that year and subsequent years. Instead of limiting assignments to recent content from the current course, we should also include problems on earlier content from that course AND previous courses.

In other words, we should provide students spiraled practice, not spiraled instruction. When I did this in 10th grade Geometry classes, students said they learned more Algebra than they had learned in their 9th grade Algebra course. And, as a result, they were ready for more advanced math--starting with Algebra T-w-o.

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Posted by David Ginsburg at 8:35 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

In my recent post, Don't Prevent Students' Mistakes, Prepare for Them, I wrote that lesson planning should be more about anticipating students' errors and preparing to help them learn from those errors than trying to develop presentations that prevent all errors.

"Sounds good in theory," a teacher said when I made this point at a workshop. "But HOW do we anticipate and prepare to help students learn from their errors?"

"Most important," I replied, "you must do what I think of as teachers' homework--working through before class everything you'll be presenting, reviewing, or assigning during class."

Yes, everything--opening "Do Now," questions related to a book discussion or science lab, homework, etc. The likelihood of students learning to their potential from any activity often depends on you working through that activity ahead of time. It's only then that you're best able to anticipate students' mistakes and help them learn from their mistakes.

Recently, for example, a math teacher I was coaching asked students to find 0.5% of 1000. A tricky problem for students, but because the teacher had worked through it ahead of time and anticipated students' confusion (reading 0.5% as 50% or 5%), she was able to help alleviate their confusion without hesitation.

On the other hand, I've also been in classrooms--including mine as a harried new teacher--where teachers squandered one teachable moment after another because they hadn't done their homework. This typically shows up in two ways:

• Inefficiency. Putting struggling students on hold as you work through problems or look something up online or in the teacher's edition is a waste of time--theirs and yours. Your focus when students are stuck should be on scaffolding their understanding, not getting up to speed on what they're doing.


• Inaccuracy. You're more likely to make mistakes when you discuss or demonstrate something in class without having given it careful, undivided attention before class. Worse yet, you risk students leaving class with misconceptions. I've seen this a lot in math classes where teachers zipped through problems they hadn't solved in advance. And I've seen it in other subjects too, like when a teacher told students the correct answer was "false" to a true-false question stating that President Bill Clinton had been impeached. (He made the common mistake of associating impeachment with conviction rather than accusation.)

Don't get me wrong. Even the best teachers make mistakes. But they don't make mistakes that can be prevented by proper preparation. And proper preparation involves more than being ready to introduce content. You must also be ready to help students as they interact with content.

A related point, which I first made in a post on differentiated instruction, is that you should spend less time presenting information and more time assessing and assisting students as they use information (similar in some ways to the flipped classroom approach). One benefit of this is that you'll be able to identify and clear up students' confusion during class rather than wait until you've reviewed their homework or other assignments after school.

And the less time you spend after school reviewing students' homework, the more time you have for doing your homework.

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Posted by David Ginsburg at 3:18 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

"Hello fellow teachers," a student said to a few colleagues and me as we walked down the hall. "Since when are you a teacher?" one of my colleagues replied.

I was surprised by this response, and thought of Paulo Freire's belief that all of us are both students and teachers. I also thought of my students, who taught me more about how to--and how not to--treat them and teach them than I learned from education courses, in-service training, or supervisors' feedback.

I learned from students who told me I needed to talk less and listen more.

I learned from students who struggled with basic arithmetic but could solve logic puzzles faster than I could.

I learned from students who told me--and then showed me--they were better off in heterogeneous groups than homogeneous ones.

I learned from students who solved problems using different methods than the ones I used.

I learned from students who rejected my "you can do it too" speeches, and reminded me that I was there to teach them, not preach to them.

I learned from students who asked, "Why do we have to show our work if we can solve problems in our heads?"

I learned from students who told me my class was boring and why it was boring.

I learned from students who "needed" to go to the bathroom whenever they became confused in class.

I learned from students who disproved widely held stereotypes of low-income urban youth.

I could go on and on because I learned from all of my students (one of many benefits of my student feedback system). And if I hadn't learned as much as I did from them, they wouldn't have learned as much as they did from me.

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Posted by David Ginsburg at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend