An effect size of at least .40 corresponds to one year of
learning over one year’s time. We often
discuss rate of learning and closing the gap for our students. Make a list of your typical teaching
strategies and their effect size. Figure
an ave. What is it? How could you improve your students’ rate of
learning? (Use the appendix for effect
sizes.) Are there strategies you would
like to replace?
I looked through the appendix for the different strategies and effect sizes, I must say I was surprised at how low some strategies rated. The low ones that surprised me were: time on task and decreasing disruptive behavior, I thought they would be much higher.
ReplyDeleteStrategies I use frequently are classroom discussion (.82), feedback (.75), worked examples (.57), and teacher immediacy (.16). The average of the strategies I use is .575, it’s not too low, but it could certainly be higher. The strategy I am going to replace is teacher immediacy; it has the lowest effect size and I may be creating dependency on me by doing this.
I calculated my average effect-size as .538. Some that I felt that I incorporated well were discussions, feedback, and student-centered learning. One strategy that I would like to starting using is meta-cognitive strategies. I do a lot of questioning, but not about how students are thinking or processing. Along with meta-cognition, I would like to do more with self-questioning and self-verbalization. I would also like to do more with creativity programs and using the different facets of creativity. I don’t see strategies that I would stop doing, but I would like to be more intentional about the strategies that I am using.
ReplyDeleteFor this question, I tried to think about which interventions I am most likely to recommend, and which I spend the most time supporting. My focus over the last few years, has been response to intervention. That appears to be time well spent (ES 1.07) and direct instruction (ES.59) A lot of what we do in interviewing students is designed to give teachers more information to build teacher -student relationships (ES.72). In observations, I'm looking, among other things, for frequency and how a student is responding to different kinds of feedback (ES .75). We avoid labeling students (ES.61). In intervention meetings we work a lot on how to build and preteach vocabulary for ELL students (ES.67). My new focuses this year have been on assessing and putting into focus academic enablers/study skills (ES.63) and social skills (ES.39). I'm not sure I'm ready to let social skills instruction go, based only on academic impact. I'd like to see numbers on "lifelong" impact. I would like too to see somewhere a compilation of the effect sizes of different social/emotional and behavior interventions. I suspect, we spend too much time talking about and measuring a student's time on task (ES .39) rather than engagement. Overall that gives me an effect size of about .66. I think I'd like to start talking more about practice intervals - spaced vs. mass practice (ES.71) and getting kids more engaged in classroom discussion (ES.82), and thinking about their thinking - metacognitive strategies (ES.69).
ReplyDeleteI thought about interventions that I would use or recommend. Response to intervention (ES 1.07) is huge for Kindergarten students as we try to get them where they need in order show what is working and what isn't. Direct instruction ( ES .59) is also a strategy that is used in order to see if one on one helps to build skills needed. Prior achievement (ES .65) is another strategy that we use when looking at how the student performed prior. Home environment (ES .52) is something in Early intervention(ES .47) we take into consideration, knowing that it can't be changed however could affect a childs performance. Goals (ES .50) is something that our intervention team works on in order to target a particular skill that we feel is important. Social skills (ES .39) is something that as we begin to think of interventions we build social skills in order to build the childs esteem and behaviors. Intervention teams look at time on task ( ES.38) in order to understand the childs behavior. Drugs (ES .32) is unfortunately something that we are dealing with when we conduct interviews with parents. Many parents are currently on drugs, on drugs during pregnancy or drug abuse is part of the childs life. We discuss whether summer school ( ES .23) would help the child to not loose things learned over the summer. Visual schedules (ES .22) is something that we talk about in IEP meeting for accommodations as well in intervention teams. We also discuss diets (ES .12) as this is important for a young ones. We discuss the diversity of the child (ES .06) as we think about learning and how the child might learn best.
ReplyDeleteI think that with our young students we look at a lot of the interventions, as they are just beginning school and we have to rule out many things in order to make sure the student is not developmentally delayed. I don't see myself stopping any of the strategies but doing a better job with the strategies.
Of the strategies I actively implement, my personal effect size is about .61, but if I really look at that list and factor in all of the outside factors... I could easily see the overall learning environment being significantly less that .4. I would definitely love to implement more metacognitive strategies and more study skills - that has been my goal all year, but there has been no buy-in from my kiddos.
ReplyDelete(Pardon the small rant that is about to ensue:) We had a great presentation yesterday about "living intentionally" and all I could think was, "How can we get our students to LEARN intentionally?" There seems to be so much angst between students and parents with school systems and, any more, we are having to focus more on "customer service," than education. Mind you, I realize this is not the case for all students, but I have heard quite often from the students that they are "not learning anything" and have sat in classrooms where they talk over the teacher, do not do what is asked of them, and focus more on their social lives than their responsibilities. I have no doubt that if we could encourage a more positive attitude about education (in all areas: students, parents, and staff) that the effect size of instruction would move in a positive direction.
My average for my teaching strategies was .54. I was really surprised to see that some areas were rated as low as they were for effect size when I looked at the chart. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that the new strategies I incorporated in my classroom this year were pretty high on the list like direct instruction and self questioning. Something that I want to work on in the future is meta-cognitive strategies and study skills strategies. I would be very interested to know a student's thought process as we work through some of our more challenging lessons. I also think that I could build a better relationship from that. Next year I would like to focus more on study skills as well, teaching students HOW to study rather than what to study.
ReplyDeleteThis has been my favorite part of the entire book, so far! When asked, "how do I know my students are learning?" The answer is usually tied to test scores or observations on my part, which can be judgemental. To be able to produce actual data from my teaching is great!!
ReplyDeleteI actually took the time this week to analyze the effect sizes of some of my genre's. When we switched from NCLB standards to Common Core I made pre and post tests for my genre's(units). Those were made according to the notes that students took at beginning of each genre. Since then I have tweaked the genre's, some alot, but not the notes or the pre/post tests. I analyzed pre/post tests from 4 genre's and found the effect sizes overall low. Some students were really impressive but overall it was not what I was expecting.
So this summer I will be looking at my notes and my pre/post tests and making the necessary changes to increase my efect sizes. I need to make sure that my learning objectives are lined up with my curriculum and hopefully when I measure the effect size I will see more growth than regression next school year.
After looking at all my materials, I know I need to revamp the surface knowledge I am trying to teach my students, I think that is where my problem is. I have spent alot of time trying to focus on the upper levels of Blooms that my surface level learning piece is not up to par! I know my students are learning but for some not like they need to in order to close those gaps.
This was a great reflective piece for me and now I have summer goals to work on!!!
This is an addition to my answer (a reply to myself)!!
DeleteThe strategies I often use are-
Classroom discussion .82
Teacher student relationships .72
Creativity programs on achievement .65
Concept Mapping .50
Cooperative vs. Individual learning .59
Direct Instruction .59
Small group learning .49
* I also use various behavior management strategies with
effect sizes ranging from .68-.41
One of the other sped teachers at Kepley uses ability grouping and I was surprised to see that the effect size was only .12!!!
I started looking at the strategies that are used in my classroom and the effect sizes that they had were interesting.
ReplyDeletePeer tutoring .55, teacher relationships .72, classroom discussion .82, worked examples .57, vocab program .67
Average .67
I try to use many different strategies in my classroom and some obviously are more effective than others. If I had a normal size classroom some of the other strategies would work better. I think that the teacher credibility or relationship one is a big one. Students need to know they can trust teachers and be able to talk to them when they have questions. A lower one in my classroom is peer tutoring which I think works well. I think that students benefit when they can help peers and also sometimes the students needing help benefits because they can hear the information from a peer.
I have a simple vocab unit weekly for the students that have ELA in my room. I think that learning new vocabulary is important to reading and learning new words to use in their writing. One area that I know I need to work on for the future is worked examples. I work math problems with a couple of my students but it seems that they then tend to lean on me to assist them with each problem. I am creating more of a dependence on my rather that independence on their part to help learn the material. I know that I need to find a different way of working on math with them than just the worked examples.
I tried to focus on things that I either spend my time on or seem to spend quite a bit of time talking to teachers about. I am heavily involved in the Student Intervention Team which is trying to use and implement response to intervention (1.07). I also spend time developing interventions for students who are learning disabled (.77) and frequently discuss repeated reading programs to build fluency (.67). I have led numerous counseling groups this year, with at least two of them primarily focusing on social skills (.39). I seem to spend more time than I would like observing in classrooms to determine a student's time on task (.38), and it seems like I am always in discussions with teachers about how a student can receive more individualized instruction (.22). This gives an average effect size of .58. I think I could improve the effect size by spending more time talking to teachers about specific strategies and interventions, instead of trying to figure out how to get more individualized instruction for a student.
ReplyDeleteI use self reported grades some in SFA and some with my students in Math (1.44), Classroom discussion (.82), Feedback (.75), Direct Instruction (.59), and Peer Tutoring (.55) just to name a few. There are quite a few of these that are built into the SFA program (as much as I hate it, it does have SOME good things). My average was 0.83. However, I feel that without some of the structured parts of SFA my total would be much lower. To make my score higher I need to be using more of those top rated influences such as RTI and self reported grades more frequently that I do.
ReplyDeleteMake a list of your typical teaching strategies and their effect size. Some of my regular teaching strategies include the following: feedback (.75), teacher-student relationships (.72), Classroom behavioral (.68), self verbalization and self questioning (.64), phonics instruction (.54). These are just a few that I use. This averages out to be .66. A way I could improve my students rate of learning is through having the students track their growth and doing more classroom discussions. Are there strategies you would like to replace? I would not replace what I already do that is working. Instead I would add more to it or do the ones that I do with more validity so that it has even more impact.
ReplyDeleteGoing through the list, I use the following strategies regularly:
ReplyDeleteDiscussion (.82), Study skills (.62), Direct instruction (.59), small group learning (.49), exercise/relaxation (.28), mainstreaming(.24), and teacher immediacy (.16). These 7 would average out to .46.
Much of the effect size depends upon the teacher's structure and ability to implement these strategies. I feel that I can improve on the structure of discussions, the consistency of study skills, the implementation of direct instruction, and the direction of small group learning. I could also implement better metacognitive strategies (.69) as well as lead students toward self-verbalization and self-questioning (.64). I would probably like to replace teacher immediacy as it creates more dependent students while showing very little growth. I would also like to replace some worksheets with projects or some form of self-learning.
Interventions that have been recommended over time include measuring Response to Intervention (1.07), Comprehensive Interventions for Students Who are Learning Disabled (0.77), Immediate Feedback (0.75), building Student-Teacher Relationships (.72), Self-Verbalization and Self-Questioning (0.64), students learning Study Skills (0.63), teachers providing Direct Instruction (Explicit Teaching) (0.59), teaching to mastery or Mastery Learning (.58), Worked Examples (0.57), Peer Tutoring (0.55), and Parental Involvement (0.49). These have been some of the more effective strategies recommended. Some that are below the 0.40 threshold include Time on Task (0.38), Computer-Assisted Instruction (0.37), Bilingual Programs (0.37), Ability Grouping for Gifted Students (0.30), Home Visits (0.29), Use of Calculators (0.27), and Matching Learning Styles (0.17). I think that quality teaching would likely be better than Computer-Assisted Instruction, provided that the teacher had time and opportunity to work individually with the student. We need to teach students how to problem solve (0.61) and how to study (0.63) in helping them do their best work.
ReplyDeleteI often use classroom discussion (.82), direct instruction (.59), peer tutoring (.55) and phonics instruction (.54). This all averages out to a .62.
ReplyDeleteThere aren'y any strategies I would like to replace, however I would like to get better at all of the strategies I use. All four of these strategies can be done in such a variety of ways. I would like to do more research to see how others are using these.
When looking at the list of strategies, I picked out nine that I use on a regular basis. My overall effect size was .64, which I thought was good. The one strategy that I find most important is the teacher-student relationships strategy. It has an effect size of .72. I feel this one is so important because if we don't have relationships with our students, it is so much harder to get anything out of them. I also liked the effect size of response to intervention. It has an effect size of 1.07, which is awesome. This is something that we preach daily, so I'm glad that the effect size is so large.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that I found interesting is the effect size of retention, which is -.13. This has been a topic of discussion lately in my building. I am not a strong supporter of retention, as I feel that it is too frequently used as an intervention. This data will help my in my discussions with teachers and administration.