Teaching Grit and Rigor in the Classroom: Validating Everything I Do

OK, well it's been a long hiatus from the blog (7 months actually), but I'm back. This year has been a difficult one, with implementing the Common Core, and dealing with a lot of changes in my school district, but I am happy to say that I'm finding more time to get back to my passions, one of them being this blog... So, with that being said, let's move on.

This morning on my way to work, I listened to a great piece on NPR called "Does Teaching Kids To Get 'Gritty' Help Them To Get Ahead?" The article goes on to explain that a child's grit (determination, the willingness to fight on and never give up) can actually be a better predictor of success than can IQ score or standardized test scores. But it also states that it can be hard to implement strategies to teach 'grit,' that it seems to be an inherent trait that certain kids have and certain kids don't.

Yet, I've been stuck thinking about this all day. Every teacher deals with the kids who give up easily. We've all heard the 'this is hard, I quit' mentality that plagues so many children in our world today. Actually, those kids have probably always been there, and it can be easy to see them not being successful as they get older. After all, what is college all about? More than anything else, college tests your ability to do something for many years, dealing with tons of ridiculous garbage, bureaucracy, and politics, and finally get a degree and a job. College is all about grit and self-drive.

In the article, Jason Baehr, a philosophy professor at Loyola Marymount University says the following:

"But I'll say from our experience in the school, I see [kids learning to be grittier] all the time. ... You can create a classroom culture in which struggle and risk-taking is valued more than just getting the right answer."

I made a challenge to myself this year, well a few actually, but what it came down to was creating a classroom focused on process and not product, struggle and rigor and not just right answers and policy. Overall, I feel validated, I feel that my students have shown a greater ability to problem solve, to persevere, and to challenge themselves than ever before in the past. Of course there are the exceptions, as with any class, but I feel that I'm finally coming into my own and creating a classroom culture that demands grit, and I want to grow that.

This article is spot on the way I feel about education at this point in my career. We can discuss hands on learning and investigative approaches, project based learning and strategies to instruct in literacy and math all day and never come to a consensus. But what we need to do is realize that not every child is going to persevere, especially in a subject they aren't passionate about. What we can do, however, is train kids to fight, and deal with their frustration in a constructive way. After all, school isn't supposed to be fun or easy. It's supposed to challenge students, to make them think, to make them frustrated, and to learn to think outside the box. Rigor, relevance, and a classroom focused on the active struggle is a great start. Please read or listen to the article, if you missed the link above, here it is again:

Does Teaching Kids To Get 'Gritty' Help Them To Get Ahead?

Daily Math Challenge: Upping the Rigor in Mathematics Instruction

All teachers (should) follow lessons plans and unit plans in order to make their instruction cohesive and make sense. I'm not going to get into all the aspects of following scaffolded, developmentally appropriate lesson plans, but if you're "winging it" everyday in the classroom without a clear focus, don't expect a lot of learning to take place.

The point of this post is taking a little timeout in math everyday to let students think and work through challenging, rigorous problems without an immediately evident solution. I call this activity "daily brain work," and it takes 10 minutes. The intent here is to pose a problem to the class, and to step away and let them work through the problem on their own. Students should be able to elaborate and articulate how they reached their solution. Finally, go over the problem, have some students share their answers, and hopefully at least a few have the correct solution to share.

In order to get started, I needed some multi step story problems. Don't start too difficult, and make sure that everything you give students is developmentally appropriate for the majority of the class.

Here are some resources to find multi step word problems and other math puzzles / brain workouts:

Math Multi-Step Word Problems

• 25 Word Problems at IQ Study Activities: A good starting point to find some straight forward story problems appropriate for 5th graders.
• A Few Pages of Story Problems at about.com: Nothing fancy, just some more story problems.
• Helping With Math Word Problems Guide: A page with some information on how to help students approach open ended questions, and a bank of questions as well.
• Challenging Word Problems at Math Top 10: Good stuff here, there's a lot of them too.

Brain Teasers / Math Puzzles

• Houghton Mifflin Grade 5 Brain Teasers: A nice little collection of word problems and brain teasers already set into CCSS categories.
• Math Salamanders Printable Math Puzzles: The whole salamander theme is a little bizarre, but there's a lot of good puzzles here. 

Depth of Knowledge in the Elementary Classroom

A new buzz phrase is out there, and it's called Depth of Knowledge. It's not exactly new, but it's Common Core ready, and I for one welcome this shift in thinking.

The days of the lazy teacher are rapidly coming to a close. Being able to sit back, have your students sift through worksheets or textbooks, and grimly move from year to failing year are no longer going to cut it. The Common Core seeks to deal with that by upping the level of accountability and rigor.

Now, over to the conversation of rigor in the classroom. I'm a firm believer that an education should be hard. Students are not there for self esteem, to feel good about themselves with little to no effort. Students are at school to learn, and learning should be hard. Rigor is one of the keys to a high growth classroom (which I can confidently say I had this year). As many teachers know, one of the most important aspects to a successful education is a strong, above average, demanding teacher. It goes without saying that the opposite of that, a weak, non caring, apathetic, BAD teacher, would have the opposite effect.

Of course, you're not here because you're one of the bad ones. You're here, seeking to learn more, seeking out resources, trying to stretch your own knowledge, because you want to grow as a teacher and demand more of your students.

Just remember, students are capable. If you believe they can do it, they WILL step up to meet that challenge.

With that being said, let's take a look at Webb's Depth of Knowledge (DOK), and how it fits with what many of us are already aware of (Bloom Taxonomy, see my post on it HERE). DOK does not seek to remove or replace Blooms, but instead seeks to simplify it, to give it a new flavor (this is my opinion).

Depth of Knowledge is built around rigor. Now, the purpose of today's post isn't to define DOK (you could do much better somewhere else), but simply to give a few visuals that help you make sense of it all. My district, like many around the country, is demanding more, more rigor, and more from teachers, and rightly so. DOK and Blooms Taxonomy are great guides, and it's important to have an open mind when approaching new methodologies.

Without further delay, here are a few resources to help you wrap your mind around all of this. None of these works are my own:

• Webb's Depth of Knowledge Guide: A great pdf book that lays it all out there in somewhat academic language. It's a good starting place if you're new to it.
• Depth of Knowledge Resources Pinterest Results Page: If you're not on Pinterest, as a teacher, you're missing out big time. There's great stuff here, and for anything you are doing in your classroom.
• Depth of Knowledge Levels: A one page pdf document that really simplifies the whole thing with some verbs and suggested activities at the four levels. 
• Blooms to DOK: A great pdf that draws the link from old Blooms to new Blooms to DOK. Must see.