Rigor and Smarter Balanced Problems

1. Rigor and Smarter Balanced Problems Elko County School District CCSS Math Professional Development Module 5, Week 44

2. Today’s Agenda • Review of Rigor • Look at Rigor in new Smarter Balanced Questions on website

3. Big Bang Movie Theater Problem http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm9gOxnX5XM

4. Review of Rigor • List as many things as you can about rigor.

5. Students have the competence to think in complex ways and also apply knowledge and skills they have acquired. Even when confronted with perplexing unknowns, students are able to use extensive knowledge and skill to create solutions and take action that further develops their skills and knowledge Students extend and refine their acquired knowledge to be able to use that knowledge automatically and routinely to analyze and solve problems and to create unique solutions Students gather and store bits of knowledge and information. Students are primarily expected to remember or understand this acquired knowledge Students use acquired knowledge to solve real-world problems, design solutions, and complete work. The highest level of application is to apply appropriate knowledge to new and unpredictable situations

6. Seven Myths about rigor • Myth 1: If you have rigorous standards, you have a rigorous course. • Rigor isn’t as much about the standards as it is about how you ask students to reach the standards. There are times when students are asked to achieve highly rigorous standards in un-rigorous ways. And other times, teachers are able to take mediocre standards and help students achieve highly rigorous learning by designing rigorous learning experiences that correspond with those standards.

7. Seven Myths about rigor • Myth 2: Rigor means more work. • While rigorous instruction may require that students put forth more effort, it is not based on the volume of work students complete. Rigor is about the quality of the work students are asked to do, not the quantity. More assignments or more reading does not guarantee more rigor. In fact, rigorous classrooms often have less assignments and homework.

8. Seven Myths about rigor • Myth Three:  Rigor means harder.  Rigorous classrooms do present more challenge to students but there is a difference between challenging and difficult. Challenging work asks students to stretch and reach for new understanding. Work can be difficult however for a variety of reasons including unclear instructions, a lack of necessary resources, a lack of adequate support, demands that are too great for the time allotted, etc.

9. Seven Myths about rigor • Myth Four:  Rigor is a matter of content. Just because you select highly rigorous content does not guarantee a highly rigorous learning experience for students.How you ask students to engage in the content also determines the level of rigor for your course.

10. Seven Myths about rigor • Myth Five:  Younger students cannot engage in rigorous instruction. • Even young children can think and interact with material in highly rigorous ways. In fact, left to their own devices, children naturally take what they are learning to solve unpredictable problems and deal with uncertainty. Doing so is at the very nature of learning. They key is to make sure that your rigorous instruction is developmentally appropriate.

11. Seven Myths about rigor • Myth Six:  In order to engage in rigor, students must first master the basics. • Rigorous thinking is involved in learning even the most basic material.  Students can learn the basics in highly rigorous ways.  They can learn how to build adequate representations, organize those facts in some way, analyze and construct relationships among those facts, and make inferences beyond what is explicitly presented whilethey are mastering the basics.

12. Seven Myths about rigor • Myth Seven: Rigor is for the elite. • All students can and should have access to rigorous instruction and learning. To reserve rigorous learning opportunities for an elite group of students while relegating others to lives of memorizing disconnected facts and blindly participating in meaningless activities is to leave them unprepared to meet the demands of a 21st century and beyond. (Mindsteps, 2013)

13. NCTM Article • “What’s All This Talk About Rigor?” • Think About: • What was something new that you learned in the article? • How can you apply this information in your classroom?

14. Smarter Balanced Practice Assessment • Smarter Balanced website http://www.smarterbalanced.org/pilot-test/ • Identify at least one way the questions are different than previous assessment items we have discussed, that you have seen, or used. • Share with your group. Are they similar? Different?

15. Smarter balanced examples

16. Smarter balanced examples

17. Smarter balanced examples

18. Smarter balanced examples

19. Smarter balanced examples

20. Smarter balanced examples

21. Task Activity • Using the task from Week 1, identify the rigor and relevance.

22. Wrap Up: Reflection • How did today’s training impact your understanding of these standards? • No impact • Some impact • Significant impact • What aha’s did you have today? • What specific questions do you still have about this domain?

23. Reference/Additional Resources • Mindsteps. (2013). Seven Myths about Rigor. Retrieved from http://www.mindstepsinc.com/2011/01/seven-myths-about-rigor/ • Smarter Balanced. (2013).