Assessment-Capable Learners: Understanding one of Hattie's most powerful influences on student achievement

John Hattie published Visible Learning (2009) to synthesize evidence-based research in order to tell a specific and compelling story: 

• Almost nothing we do harms kids
• Most of what we do leads kids to learning
• Therefore, instead of talking about "what works", we should be focused on "what works best"

Doug Fisher says that Hattie's work tells us what works, how it works and when it works. Deb Masters suggests the Mindframes for Teachers and Leaders represent a succinct story of the Visible Learning Research. 

My sketchnotes from Masters' session on the 10 Mindframes for Teachers & Leaders.

To clearly show what works best (has greater probability of having a high impact on student learning), Hattie used the research to calculate the effect size for each influence studied. He found that an effect size of d = 0.15 to d = 0.40 represented what teachers can accomplish in a typical year of schooling. He argued therefore, we must focus on those strategies that have an effect size of d = 0.40 and higher; those influences that work best.

http://www.education.vic.gov.au/Documents/about/research/ravisiblelearning.pdf

When Visible Learning Trainer Dave Nagel came to our district in February 2016, he mentioned an influence I hadn't heard of before in Hattie's research: Assessment-Capable Learners. Assessment-Capable Learners, Nagel explained, had an effect size of d =1.44, well above the majority of the other influences listed in Hattie's research. This influence is one of the most important things we can do to raise student achievement.

Although Nagel showed the following slide during his keynote, I was still left confused; what the heck was an Assessment-Capable Learner? How do we develop these types of students?

A slide explaining the attributes of an Assessment-Capable Learner from Dave Nagel, February 2016

As with many of the influences on Hattie's list, there is great danger at taking misguided action based on a superficial understanding of what an Assessment-Capable Learner is. On the surface, one might think that Hattie is suggesting that we develop learners who are capable of successfully taking assessments, particularly those high stakes tests which are pervasive in schools throughout the world; learners who have practiced and are skilled at various test-taking strategies: closely-reading the questions, eliminating answers obviously wrong, going back and checking work, etc. However there is evidence that teaching learners these test-taking strategies actually does not have a high impact on student learning (teaching test-taking: d = 0.27).

Those that have an initial misunderstanding of an Assessment-Capable Learner aren't alone. When asked, "Why are we striving for an 'assessment-capable learner' and not a 'self-regulated learner?'" Hattie admitted that he struggles with a lot of "those words". Rather, he suggests that we think about Assessment Capable Learners in this way: "When students see themselves as their own teachers."

Each keynote and breakout session at the Annual Visible Learning Conference in Washington, D.C. allowed me to further construct my own understanding of Assessment-Capable Learners. Below, I share a synthesis of my thinking:



Assessment-Capable Learners:

• can answer the following three questions, as long as teachers have clearly communicated learning intentions and success criteria (teacher clarity: d = 0.75)

1. What am I learning?
2. Why am I learning it?
3. How will I know when I've had success & have learned it?

• know where they are, where they're going (based on clear learning intentions & success criteria) and their next steps to move forward.
• know the language of learning (VOICE) and make decisions about their learning (CHOICE)
• are open to and expect feedback.
• give feedback to others, because they recognize the powerful impact they can have on their peers' learning.
• set challenging, yet realistic learning goals AND put forth the effort to reach them.
• are active, involved and engaged in their own learning.
• are radical change agents
• see errors as opportunities for learning
• exhibit the eight Mindframes for Learners:

1. I want to know what success looks like.
2. I like challenging goals.
3. I want to master and have deep learning.
4. I am confident I can learn.
5. I want to become my own teacher.
6. I engage in dialogue, not monologue, about my learning.
7. I like to plan to implement my learning goals.
8. I want to learn to be strategic in my learning goals.

As I continue to construct my own understanding of an Assessment-Capable Learner, I begin to ask: what do we teachers need to do to develop these dispositions and encourage these actions in the learners with whom we work?

THANK YOU to all the presenters at the conference. My thinking above represents a synthesis of keynotes and breakout sessions led by those directly quoted above and: Paul Bloomberg, Barb Pitchford, Peter DeWitt, Michael Fullan, Jen Mall, Michael McDowell.

Kindergartners and the research process

Students who are in their final year of the Primary Years Program are expected to carry out an extended, collaborative inquiry project, known as the exhibition.

The exhibition represents a significant event in the life of both the school and student, synthesizing the essential elements of the program and sharing them with the whole school community. It is a culminating experience marking the transition from PYP to further steps in education (information on exhibition taken from the IBO website).

All teachers at every grade level have a responsibility to prepare our students for exhibition. Recognizing this responsibility, one kindergarten teacher recently e-mailed me:

"I am wondering if you have any good ideas for the process of doing mini research projects in kindergarten. Today my kids came up with questions they have about animals. They all start with “I wonder…” The questions are like… I wonder why skunks stink. I wonder what elephants eat? I have done this in the past and find that I have to do all the research since the kids can’t really read well enough to do research. Usually we look things up together on National Geographic kids or other sites. Any other ideas?"

Below are samples of some of the students' questions.

"I wonder why does a skunk stink."

"I wonder why do snakes bite."

"I wonder why a whale shark is so big."

"I wonder why a zebra has a tail."

"I wonder why do giraffes have a long neck."

"I wonder why does a lion have claws."

"I wonder if a snake can get married."

"I wonder if a fish has families."

"I wonder how elephants eat."

"I wonder why zebras have stripes."

"I wonder why does a raccoon have stripes."

"I wonder why an arctic fox is white."

The next day, the kindergarten teacher and I chatted about the Research Process that we follow at Kaposia: Plan, Gather, Organize, Share, and Evaluate. Question generation is a part of the Plan phase of the process.

As we reviewed all the questions together, we realized that no two questions were the same. We felt that if we sought to answer every specific question with the kids, students would learn lots of random facts, but wouldn't have the opportunity to construct conceptual understandings. 

To focus on the concepts behind the questions, we decided that it would be best to sort the questions with the students to make their thinking visible and to find the BIG IDEAS. As I left the planning meeting, the teacher was going to continue the activity later in the week, so I forwarded her some helpful sites from the San Diego Zoo where they could gather information as they continued the research process.

The next school day, I received this inspiring communication:

"I couldn't wait until Friday to try to see if the kids could put the questions into categories because they were wondering what we were going to do with the questions, so I did it with them today. It was so interesting.

I guided them in the process but they really picked up on it quickly. One said we should call the category for, "Why do snakes bite?" "action" because biting is an action. Then we came to why do skunks stink and one girl clarified that skunks don't stink; they spray and it stinks. The "action" kid made the connection that it is an action to tell you to stay away just like the biting, so we changed the name of the category to "actions that tell you to stay away." I couldn't believe someone put that together!

We had the question, "why are whale sharks so big?" and the kids were saying that we should put that into the body part category, but a kid said no, that is size not a body part. I was impressed he came up with the term, size!

The girl with the question, "can snakes get married?" clarified that she doesn't mean can they have a wedding, she means do they stay together like they are married (I understood that she really meant do they bond for life, or bonded pair) so I lead that into questioning animals that live in packs or alone. We called the category, "Animal families."

I was so surprised by how they did with it. We have been doing comparing and contrasting with language arts and I really saw them carry that over. Thank you so much for the tip to organize the questions that way.

So our categories are:

• Size
• Color (why do animals have stripes, etc)
• Parts of the body (why to giraffes have tails, etc)
• Actions that tell you to stay away
• Eating
• Animal families (can snakes get married?)
• Animal language (can snakes talk to each other?)"

Now that students will be able to focus on the big ideas related to their animal inquiries, they are ready to start gathering information. In order to research, the kindergartners will team up with their 5th grade reading buddies to investigate a particular animal's size, color, body parts (all adaptations), actions that tell you to stay away (defense), eating (diet), animal families (community), and animal language (communication).

As students gather new information, they will organize it in a way that they can easily share it with others. Finally, students and teachers will have to evaluate the process, reflecting on what went well and what should be changed in the future.

After reading about how a kindergarten teacher is leading her students through the research process, how can you or have you lead your own students through this easy-to-follow, five-step research process?

First graders and the research process

As a way to develop their understanding that making observations leads to discoveries, first graders complete a research project where they investigate a particular dinosaur. The research process that one first grade classroom followed can be found on our school's media website, under the tab "Research". This is a five-step research process where kids plan, gather, organize, share, and evaluate.

Plan: The children wrote down a question that they had about dinosaurs on a sticky note and stuck it to a piece of chart paper.

Then, as a class, the students sorted the questions into categories and came up with four general questions that covered all the individual questions they were asking.

1. What did they look like?
2. What did they eat?
3. How did they travel?
4. When and where did they live?

Note: This process is the beginning of the Visible Thinking Routine, "Generate-Sort-Connect-Elaborate" from the book Making Thinking Visible by Ritchhart, Church, & Morrison. Students first generated questions and then sorted them into their own categories with which they would organize their thinking and research. Creating categories this way, instead of using prescribed, teacher-created categories, makes the research more engaging, relevant, challenging, and significant for the students. It is construction of knowledge and understanding. It is INQUIRY! 

Gather: In groups of three, students used information pages that the teacher had found and books to answer their questions on one particular dinosaur.

Organize: Students used a flap book (a folded piece of paper with the top half cut into four flaps. Students wrote the questions on the top flaps and the answers were written on the inside underneath each question) to record the answers to their questions that were driving their research. 

Share: The first grade students worked in the computer lab for two days, transferring the information contained in their flap books into Google Presentations. The first day, they typed everything in. The second day, they added pictures and went back to check for periods and capital letters. They obviously didn’t catch all of their errors, but they did “edit” them.

from the Velociraptor presentation

from the Tyrannosaurus Rex presentation

from the Triceratops presentation

from the Ankylosaurus presentation

Then, on the third day they presented them to the class.

Evaluate: After each presentation, students in the audience asked questions and offered comments to the presenting students. Student comments included things they liked or found interesting in each presentation.

The classroom teacher evaluated the students by observing them throughout the research process.

After reading about how 1st graders followed the research process of plan, gather, organize, share, and evaluate to learn more about dinosaurs, how could you or have you used the research process with your students?

Teaching comprehension strategies to students using engaging and challenging texts

One morning, an elementary teacher casually asked the students if they had heard about an event currently in the news: the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 that had gone missing. The students started to share the bits and pieces of information that they had heard from various sources and instinctively, the teacher started to make the students’ thinking visible by writing down on the board what the students were saying, under the heading: “What we think we know”. Sensing that some of the information on their list was faulty, the teacher instructed the students to do a little research on their Chromebooks to either confirm or debunk the ‘facts’ that they had amassed.

The students took to the internet, searching for news stories and articles that would give them the information they needed. Students also wrote down questions that came up as they read further about the current event. Moving around the room of engaged students, the teacher realized that what had started as a ‘mini-inquiry’ (Daniels, H. & Harvey, S. (2009).Comprehension and Collaboration: Inquiry Circles in Action, Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.) could easily be turned into a whole-group mini reading lesson.

Following the scope and sequence of the reading curriculum, students had been learning the comprehension strategy of comparing. Learning this particular strategy allowed students to meet the Minnesota ELA Reading Benchmark: “Compare and contrast texts in different forms ... in terms of their approaches to similar themes and topics.” Over a break, the teacher designed a learning experience for the students that would allow them to apply the comprehension strategy of comparing, while still motivating them with their interest in the missing plane.

To support the students’ learning, the teacher identified three different articles about the missing plane: one from CNN, one from Al Jazeera, and one from Fox News. (NOTE: the texts were complex, but the students were capable of reading and understanding the articles selected with appropriate support. To find a general reading level of texts online try these resources: http://read-able.com or https://readability-score.com). The students were to compare the texts, noting important similarities and differences. Through the structure of this purposeful inquiry, the students were able to extract meaning from the texts they read and come to the conceptual understanding that news articles are written from the unique perspective of the journalist (and the journalist’s organization) and it is the responsibility of readers to synthesize what they read and make judgements for themselves.

After reading about teaching comprehension strategies to students using engaging, relevant, challenging, and significant texts, what is:

• An instructional practice you’ll continue to use because of the story.
• An instructional practice you currently use that you’ll reexamine in light of the story.
• An instructional practice you don’t currently use, but will try because of what you read in the story.