As a young teacher, I always searched for ways to motivate my students to work to their fullest potential. It wasn’t until I read The Smart and Good Schools report that I finally realized what I was missing in my teaching tool belt: Revisions.
The idea seemed so clever, yet so obvious, so necessary. From that moment, I have allowed and encouraged my students to revise any and all of their work. Since making this change in my class, I have seen what has worked well and what has worked amazingly well. As Vince Lombardi once said, “Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect”.
My students are given the opportunity to revise any problems missed on an assignment and resubmit it to me for a new grade – full credit. The idea behind doing this is class work and homework should be considered practice. We practice to become proficient. Therefore, if we make mistakes along the way, we should be given the chance to learn from our errors and redo it mistake free. My students may revise assignments multiple times; there is no limit on the number of attempts to produce a great math product.
I do have some limitations with this process. Revisions can only be done, for an improved grade, during the current chapter. Once we take the chapter test, the assignment scores are locked and cannot be changed. While I believe it is always important to continue the revision process, I found early on that a time limit must be placed or some of the students might be tempted to wait until the end of the quarter to revise the assignments in a last ditch effort to raise their grade. My thought is the grade is the secondary reason behind revisions. The primary reason for revisions is to understand the concept and the test date is the deadline to show full understanding of the concepts for the given chapter.
There must be pros and cons for revising, right? The answer is yes, though my belief is the pros heavily outweigh the cons. The one con of revising is the extra work placed at the feet of the teacher. We must grade assignments on a daily basis and have the graded papers back the very next day, to be effective. I strongly believe that we should practice what we preach and if we are asking our kids to work to their fullest potential, we should model the same work ethic to the class.
The pros for revisions are endless. By using this process, you can expect more from your students and they know that it is ok to take risks because they will have a second and third chance if needed. This process also promotes honesty. Students know it is ok to mark problems when they are wrong because they are allowed to fix their mistakes and the benefit of the relearning far outweighs those for cheating. The greatest benefit from using this process is the depth of understanding that occurs. The focus of assignments goes from getting them done to learning the concept more deeply and completely. The proof is bottom line. Students that use this process actually test better and retain longer. The benefit I enjoy most is the attitude changes. I have kids every year that come back to tell me how well they are doing in math and how easy it is. I contribute much of their success to this life choice.
Matt Davidson 11:26 am on January 27, 2011 Permalink |
This is really an excellent piece on the need for intentionally building the culture of excellence & ethics NEEDED for learning. Character development isn’t something nice to do if you have time; it isn’t about some future goal; it’s about giving you the catalyst you need to teach. Also, consider in this example the moral & performance character DEVELOPED FROM this approach to revision: work ethic, perseverance, humility, responsibility, positive attitude, etc. Character development experiences that occur in and through teaching & learning are powerful and transformative. Students will likely never forget what they learned on how to revise in this class.
Matt Davidson 11:34 am on January 27, 2011 Permalink |
Should also be noted the moral and performance character NEEDED FOR TEACHING revisions this way. How does he show that he cares about his students? By demanding excellence, by not accepting less than their best, by respecting them and their potential, by being patient and persistent. In order to teach you have to love the heck out of kids–and one of the primary ways we show that in the classroom is by teaching well. Kids know “Gosh, he must love me or he wouldn’t care this much about my work or seeing me succeed.” All the cliche depictions of teachers, with their elquent speeches and blah, blah, blah–it’s not that they’re false, but they are misleading since in reality good teaching is about day-to-day grit. High expectations matched with high support & challenge, staying after something simple, but essential, like revisions. “Teachers shape the culture; the culture shapes the character.”
Kyle Baker 5:05 pm on January 27, 2011 Permalink |
Mark, great notes on revision! I remember trying to implement a revision-strategy being a very challenging adventure when I was in the classroom, and I don’t think by any measure I ever got it to a consistent or effective practice. I was wondering how you introduce your revision policies to your students and their parents, because I would imagine that unfortunately in many classes they don’t experience the same opportunity. Do you use explanatory documents, parent back-to-school night, letter home, etc. to ensure that you, the students, and parents are all on the same page, or is in mainly a strategy that is explained to students within the classroom?
Mark Schumacker 8:59 pm on January 27, 2011 Permalink |
Matt, I couldn’t agree with you more. When I first became interested in teaching character in the classroom, I had a hard time trying to allot time to have “special character education lessons”. This went on for a few years. Please don’t get me wrong, there were a lot of great teaching moments had within these lessons, though it wasn’t until I met you and Tom that I truly learned how to infuse character education into what I was already doing as a teacher. Over the years I have been able to find ways to incorporate character education in just about anything I did.
Kyle, the hardest part of using revisions in the classroom is determining the logistics. What will be my guidelines? What are my expectations? How can I sell this to the kids? How can I sell this to the parents? How much time do I want to invest? How much time do I want the kids to invest?
The first year was brutal for me. I was very loose with my expectations. If a child wanted to revise an assignment, he had to redo the entire assignment. The kids had until the end of the quarter to revise their work. Students were able to revise an assignment, even if it wasn’t complete in the first place. At one point I found myself venting to the kids about the amount of work this was causing me. Boy, I learned a lot that year. Over the next couple of years, I made a lot of revisions myself. In fact, I revise the process every year in search of the perfect system. Some of the changes have been:
1. All revisions must be completed before said chapter’s test.
2. The kids only have to revise the problems that they missed.
3. The kids may now revise assignments as many times as needed.
4. The kids have to complete the assignment, in the first place, to have the right to revise it.
I have a few new and improved changes I made this year, and I will speak about them in detail in my next blog post.
Introducing revisions the first year of inception was the most trying. I had to convince the parents that this was not a disservice to the kids. Many of the parents thought the kids would learn it was acceptable to give a half-effort the first time. I spent a lot of time explaining that homework is practice and it is actually acceptable to make mistakes, as long as you learn and grow from them. I spent a lot of time trying to convince the kids that yes, this is a lot of extra work, though you will benefit from it in the long run (because it was a deeper learning). Many of the kids have been programmed to have a one and done mentality. They accept their first grade and move on to the next assignment.
After a year or two of using this teaching method, the kids and parents have heard the good news about the benefits. Ever since the inaugural year, I have not had a single complaint about the policy!
Some of the specific methods I use to introduce this learning system are:
1. I have a written document that spells out the revision system. The kids receive this at the start of the year and I also give a copy to the parents.
2. I discuss this methodology with the students on the third day of school.
3. I offer a Math Night in the fall (for the parents) and this is one of the main topics of the night. I also host a second Math Night for those students still struggling after the first nine weeks. I will discuss the Math Night in detail in one of my future blog postings.
4. I send out e-mails periodically over the first 9 weeks of school explaining and re-explaining the revision policy.
The key is to make myself as accessible as I can so the parents and students know they can speak frankly with me concerning this and any policy. I have found this open line of communication extremely helpful. As I mentioned before, this does take some work, but the results are well worth the effort!