Rigor...Stiffening of the body following death?Rigidly severe or unbending?Extremely strict?

Rigor is not the number of students a teacher fails!

Many people equate rigor with academic difficulty.

So what is rigor?

The purpose of rigor is not to make work hard for students: rather it should be to raise the bar on what teachers expectof students and on our ability to scaffold sophisticated content andprocesses to ensure student success.

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Authentic Engagement

Articulated Curriculum

High Expectations

RIGOR

(click on each element for definition)

Students are regularly expected to raise questions, to solve problems, to think, and to reason.

Students are doing challenging, high-level assignments including reading provocative, complex, and emotionally challenging text .

Assignments include extended projects in which original work and revision to standards is expected.

Students are challenged to construct explanations and to justify arguments.

Instruction is organized to support reflection on learning processes and strategies.

What is high demand thinking?

How do we develop high demand thinking?

focus on powerful essential questionsfocus on complexity of student work

Two good places to start...

QUESTION

QUALITY: Essential questions should be clear, relevant, and written in kid language.

UNDERSTANDING: Essential questions should tie directly to enduring understandings.EXPLORATION: Essential questions should promote students diggingdeeply into the content.

OPEN-ENDED: Essential questions do not have one right answer.

SPARK CONVERSATION: Essential questions should encourage debate and discussion.

Rigor and Essential Questions

ITERATIVE: Essential questions should be revisited throughout the unit as students' understandings grow.

NURTURES HIGHER ORDER THINKING: Essential questions frequently ask students to consider "why," "to what extent," and "how."

THINKING CREATIVELY: Essential questions prompt students to seek new possibilities.

What makes a revolution revolutionary?

Is it morally right to use violence to bring about important social change? If so, under what circumstances?

Does history make the leader or does the leader make history?

Do patterns exist in the revolutions of the 20th century?

Which has played a greater role in determining the shape of history--ideas or individuals?

Essential Questions for 20th Century History

What is needed to cultivate these skills in the classroom?

A number of researchers claim that the classroom must nurture an environment providing modeling, rehearsal, and coaching.

Skills needed to begin to think about issues and problems do not suddenly appear in ourstudents. Teachers who have attempted to incorporate high demand questioning in their discussions or have administered test items demanding some thought rather than just recallfrom their students are usually dismayed at the preliminary results. Unless the students have been prepared for the change in expectations, both the students and the teacher arelikely to experience frustration.

Working with high demand essential questions...

How do we provide modeling, rehearsal, and coaching forour students as they learn to grapple with high demand questions?

Increasing High Demand Thinking with Complexity

Increasing complexity means moving beyond activities thatrequire students to recall information to asking them to use knowledge inMULTIFACETED ways.

Facets of Understanding

help us build complexity into our assignments

Explain: Provide thorough and justifiable accounts of phenomena, facts, and data.

Interpret: Tell meaningful stories, offer apt translations, provide a revealing historical or personal dimension to ideas and events; make subjects personal or accessible through images, anecdotes, analogies, and models.

Apply: Effectively use and adapt what they know in diverse contexts.

Have perspective: See and hear points of view through critical eyes and ears; see the big picture.

Empathize: Find value in what others might find odd, alien, or implausible; perceive sensitively on the basis of prior indirect experience.

Have self-knowledge: Perceive the personal style, prejudices, projections, and habits of mind that both shape and impede our own understanding; they are aware of what they do not understand and why understanding is so hard.

Complexity through projects

Complexity in writing and reading

Complexity with vocabulary

Increasing complexity of assignments...

Facets of Understandinghelp us build complexity into our assignments

Explain: Provide thorough and justifiable accounts of phenomena, facts, and data.

Interpret: Tell meaningful stories, offer apt translations, provide a revealing historical or personal dimension to ideas and events; make subjects personal or accessible through images, anecdotes, analogies, and models.

Apply: Effectively use and adapt what they know in diverse contexts.Have perspective: See and hear points of view through critical eyes and ears; see the big picture.

Empathize: Find value in what others might find odd, alien, or implausible; perceive sensitively on the basis of prior indirect experience.

Have self-knowledge: Perceive the personal style, prejudices, projections, and habits of mind that both shape and impede our own understanding; they are aware of what they do not understand and why understanding is so hard.

Increasing complexity of assignments...

Complexity through projects

Complexity in writing and reading

Complexity with vocabulary

Complexity Through Projects

Working in groups of three, students will create and hold a press conference with a pair of revolutionary leaders: (Lenin and Stalin) (Zedong and Chiang Kai-Shek) (King, Jr. and Malcolm X). Students should begin by deciding which role they will assume: leader #1, leader #2, or interviewer.

Next, the group will work collaboratively to research the answers to the interview questions: 1. How were you shaped by the events that occurred in your country? 2. How did your actions shape the history of your country? 3. What kinds of technologies did you use to get your message of change out to the people of your country? 4. In what ways do you think individuals are important to bringing about change in world history?).

Students will film and submit their interviews. The teacher will assess the films and hold an "Academy Awards" in which awards will be handed out for "Best Interviewer," "Best Actor,"and "Best Overall Interview." Focus on unit Enduring Understanding: A study of revolutions reveal patterns that appear across time and place. Focus on unit Essential Questions: Does history make the leader or does the leader make history? and Do patterns exist in the revolutions of the 20th century? and Which has played a greater role in determining the shape of history--ideasor individuals?

Complexity through Projects: 20th Century History

Complexity in Writing:

Rachet up rigor using RAFT

RoleAudienceFormatTopic

click globe for example

We can also use writing to scaffold understanding of complex text...

http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/instruction/ela/6-12/tools/index.htm

Complexity Through Vocabulary

How do we move beyond students simply memorizing definitions and regurgitating them on tests?

In a rigorous classroom, students are expected to demonstrate they understand what a vocabularyword means, usually through anexplanation with details, examples,and elaboration.

Cumulative Vocabulary Experience

Words heard per hour

Welfare 616

Working Class 1,251

Professional 2,153

Pare your vocabulary down...

Critical Useful but not critical

Interesting but not very useful

Select a limited number of words for robust, explicit vocabulary instruction.

Vocabulary ChartBook

definitionOther definition

My definition

Source:

WordDiagram

Examples

Nonexamples

How about writing definitions as riddles?

Prices go up.Your wallet is thinner.You pay twice as muchto provide family dinner.

What am I?

Inflation

Try definitions as raps or acrostic poems or as two voice poems...Metals

I live on the left side of the periodictable.

I am an electron giver.

I am shiny.

You can stretch me until I am thin.

I have definite shape and volume.

I adorn your fingers.

I become positive when I bond.

Nonmetals

I live on the right side.

I am an electron taker.

I am dull.

I don't even bend.

I take the shape of all of them.

I help you breathe.

I become negative when I bond.

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RIGOR

What is intellectual risk-taking?

Students are urged to persist with complex work, tolerating the discomfort that often accompanies the condition of disequilibrium.Teachers teach students the skills and dispositions that help them deal with their discomfort so they can engage in rigorous content.

Students tackle complex reading that helps them build sophisticated schema. Students are given opportunities to experiment, make mistakes and reflect on them.

Teachers reinforce that high quality work almost always requires multiple iterations.

Intellectual Risk-taking

Rigorous learning often invites us toface the limits of our own knowledgeand competence. We feel vulnerable - asthough we are balancing on a very tall, very narrow beam high above our own comfort zone.

Let's face it: rigor feels risky!

Good teachers recognize their obligation to offer students the skills anddispositions that help them balance above their own discomfort in orderto engage rigorous content.

How do we make kids feel safe enough to take risks?

How do we encourage students to endure disequilibrium?

How do we develop resilient learners?

Rigorous work begins with a clear message

This work is important.You can do this.I will help you.

What sort of teaching and assessment strategiessupport risk-taking?

Assignments that call for revision toward clear high standardsPortfolios that support iterations, exploration, and reflection Socratic questioning that allows students to examine their own thinkingInstruction that involves students in determining what they learn and how they learn itTeacher feedback that reinforces students on the edge of their competence can be successful, and that temporary failure is part of success

Teacher modeling of the processes to accomplish work A clear teacher presence as students struggle

Strategies....

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Authentic Engagement

Articulated Curriculum

High Expectations

RIGOR

What is authentic engagement?

Students' prior knowledge and out-of-school knowledge is used regularly in the teaching and learning process.

Instructional tasks require students to interpret texts and constructsolutions.

Students are challenged to construct explanations and test theirunderstandings.

Classroom tasks support students in seeing the relevance of what theyare learning to their lives and world.

What is Authenticity?

There are four dimensions of reality of authenticity:·Kinds of work. In authentic learning situations, the work students do is based on the roles adults play as workers and citizens.·Sources. Interviews, online correspondence with experts, surveys...etc.·Communication. Authentic learning situations extend reading, writing, and speaking skills in those genres most likely to be useful to students in the real world.·Problem-based learning. Problems in the real world tend to be "messy" or ill-defined; authentic learning, whether simulated or real, therefore, uses complex, nonroutine problems to help students acquire skills as investigators, researchers, and problem solvers.

What Is Authentic Learning?Authenticity is the curriculum goal in

which we help students acquire real-world skills and knowledge by developing their abilities to read, write, solve problems, and apply concepts in a manner that prepares them for their lives and beyond.

We want students to understand what it takes to succeed...·at work·with a family·and as a productive citizen

Why Authenticity Matters

·Authenticity and Motivation. People are more motivated when they value what they are doing and when they believe they have a chance for success.·Authenticity and Learning Style. Research suggests that many students' cognitive achievements can be improved by including real-life contexts in the curriculum (Lave & Wenger, 1991).·Authenticity and the Ends of School. If school fails to mirror the world, our children will be unprepared for their post-school lives.

Supporting Each Student to Learn at High Levels

Motivation for students is value and success.People are more motivated when they value what they are doing and when they believe they have a chance for success.

·Do students see value in your lesson?

·Do they believe they can be successful?

Rigor = RelevanceStudents are more motivated to learn when they see value, or relevance of learning.

Authentic Engagement Is NOT:·Ritual Engagement. The immediate end of the assigned work has little or no inherent meaning or direct value to the student, but the student associates it with extrinsic outcomes and results that are of value.··Passive Compliance. The student is willing to expend whatever effort is needed to avoid negative consequences, although he or she sees little meaning in the tasks assigned or the consequences of doing those tasks.··Retreatism. The student is disengaged from the tasks, expends no energy in attempting to comply with the demands of the tasks, but does not act in ways that disrupt others and does not try to substitute other activities for the assigned task.··Rebellion. The student summarily refuses to do the task assigned, acts in ways that disrupt others, or attempts to substitute tasks and activities to which he or she is committed in lieu of those assigned or supported by the school and by the teacher.

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High Expectations

RIGOR

Rigor Resources

Blackburn, Barbara R. Rigor is Not a Four-Letter Word. Eye on Education: Larchmont, New York, 1961

Marzano, Robert J. Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development:Alexandria, Virginia, 2004

Chuska, Kenneth R. Improving Classroom Questions - A Teacher’s Guide to Increasing Student Motivation, Participation, and Higher-Level Thinking. Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation, Bloomington, Indiana, 1995

Berger, Ron An Ethic of Excellence - Building a Culture of Craftsmanship with Students. Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH, 2003

Farstrup, Alan E., Samuels, S. Jay What Research Has to Say About Vocabulary Instruction. International Reading Association, Newark, Delaware, 2008

Wagner, Tony, Kegan, Robert, Lahey, Lisa, Lemmons, Richard W., Garnier, Jude, Helsing, Deborah, Howell, Annie, Thurber Rasmussen, Harriette Change Leadership - A Practical Guide to Transforming Our Schools. Jossey-Bass, a Wiley Imprint, San Francisco, California, 2006

Schlechty, Phillip C. Working on the Work - An Action Plan for Teachers, Principals, and Superintendents. Jossey-Bass, a Wiley Imprint, San Francisco, California, 2002

Strong, Richard W., Silver, Harvey F., Perini, Matthew J. Teaching What Matters Most - Standards and Strategies for Raising Student Achievement. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Alexandria, Virginia, 2001

What are teachers doing in a more rigorous classroom?

What are students doing?

What kinds of student work would provide evidence of rigor?

How can schools support rigorous work?

Discussion