Teach like a champion 3.0: 63 techniques that put students on the path to college - Lemov Doug 2021

Technique 9: Active observation (activeobs)
Check for understanding

Here is a simple observation about teaching: What we are looking at as our students are working is a stream of data. But this is in fact two statements at once. The first—that it is data we are looking at—tells us that it contains the seeds of insight if we think analytically and purposefully about it. The second—that it is a stream—tells us that the information may come at us fast and furious; there will often be too much to make sense of all at once, or even to remember. Happily, making a few small changes to what you do when, and before, you observe student work can help you make more sense of the data stream.

The first change is to track what you see in writing. You can see Denarius Frazier doing this in the clip Denarius Frazier: Remainder, which you watched at the beginning of the chapter. He is carrying a clipboard, and as he moves around the room he makes slight notations—about a consistent kind of error he's seeing or about students who can provide strong examples, or who will need extra support. Just this simple move is a game-changer.

If we think we're going to circulate around the room making “mental notes” about thirty students' work on two problems with four steps each, while perhaps taking a few questions and offering occasional encouragement, and still be able to remember at the end of it what the most common error was and which students struggled where, we are kidding ourselves. Working memory is small; even the slightest distractions cause us to forget what we're trying to remember and in an environment as complex as a classroom working memory is quickly overwhelmed. In such a setting there's really no such thing as taking mental notes.

Denarius, however, is able to give individualized feedback to each student, note their progress, and at the same time discern the common error, or the most germane topic for intervention. “Much better,” he says to one student as he circulates. Think about that. He remembers how she did on a similar problem earlier in the day or perhaps the day before and tells her he can see the difference in her work. He's able to do this because in tracking the data on student performance he engages more actively with it, and therefore remembers it. And with his observations written down, he can review his notes after one lesson or before the next. When you put your observations on paper you create a permanent record, increase the amount you remember, and free your working memory to perceive more. The result is that Denarius remembers how his student did yesterday and can affirm her progress today. Could there be a stronger statement of the fact that he believes her progress is important?

More than just writing things down, Active Observation means deciding intentionally what to look for and maintaining discipline in looking for what you have prioritized. We know from cognitive psychology that observation is subjective and unreliable; we won't notice what's most important unless we prepare to focus on it and are looking for it. We're also inclined to think that looking for more things is better than attending to fewer things, but that's often not the case in the classroom.

In one of my first teaching jobs a mentor advised me to circulate around the room when my students were doing independent work. That was good advice. Walking around and looking over this or that student's shoulder encouraged students to do their best work, in part because my actions suggested that I cared about what they were writing and was interested in their ideas, and, frankly, that I would know how hard they were working. But there was a lot more I could have done to get the most out of that “walking around.”

For one thing, while I believed I was very observant, I probably was not. Usually I would be looking passively, waiting to be struck by spontaneous observations about what students were doing. This can sometimes be useful, but it meant that I was prone to inattentional blindness—not seeing what was plainly before me—for example, that students were not successfully able to do the task I'd assigned. What I noticed was often a random event. What I gave students feedback on was also likely to be accidental. If on any given day there were ten really important things you could say about students' writing, I might notice something about number seven on the list. Or number nine. The cost was that I wasn't talking about topics one, two, and three consistently—and sometimes not at all.

And honestly, without a real purpose for what I was looking for, I sometimes allowed myself to become more passive. I really wasn't looking that carefully. I'd mimic the actions of a carefully observing teacher, nodding approvingly and squinting as if in keen interest, but my mind would wander.

I would often be looking mostly for whether my students appeared to be working hard. Their topic sentences were poor and yet I'd walk right past because their pencils were scribbling away. Effort is generally a good thing but it doesn't guarantee learning. “Never mistake activity for achievement,” the coach and teacher John Wooden advised. Just because students are working hard at a task does not mean they are learning from it. Understanding whether students are making real progress requires more careful observation. Were they using strong active verbs as they scribbled away? Were they able to cite evidence both directly and indirectly?

Compare my well-intentioned but mostly subpar observation to the deliberateness we see in the clip Julia Addeo: Binomials. Like Denarius, she's carrying a page of notes as she works the room. She explained what was on it.

“My ’key’ mirrors exactly what students should have on their paper, including the question, the work that they should be showing, and the correct answer, boxed,” Julia told me. “I leave some room on the side to make checks and notes as I monitor the classroom. I keep a tally of how students did or the initials of names that I know I want to Show Call or Cold Call.”

As she observes, she quickly notes that students are doing fine with problem number 1. She won't need more than a quick review afterwards to reinforce technical vocabulary. But her observations reveal that there's something going on in problem 2. You can see her marking up her notes with details on the errors students are making. Then you can see her literally step back, review the data, and make a decision about how to proceed—as that decisive nod of her head about thirty-seven seconds in reveals.

Tracking the data in writing has freed her working memory. Rather than merely trying to remember what she's seen, it can now focus on analyzing what students are doing. Her use of Active Observation allows her later to Cold Call students who she knows will contribute strong explanations when she's reviewing the problem. These students often do an exemplary job of explaining concepts to their peers. This is not a lucky accident. She has used the knowledge gained from her Active Observation to choose participants intentionally and even strategically.

In Front the Writing (technique 40) and Disciplined Discussions (technique 46) I call this idea “Hunting, Not Fishing.” You hunt for productive answers that will move the conversation in a productive direction as you circulate. Then later you draw on them while teaching so you don't have to fish—call on students more or less randomly, hoping they will have useful responses. This allows you to let students do more of the cognitive work, and build a culture where the strength of students' thinking is more visible to their peers and where being Cold Called is as often as not a sign of the quality of their work. “Hunting” for answers in this way and remembering whom to call on eight or twelve minutes later demands more of working memory than almost any teacher has available in a busy classroom. It requires Active Observation.

But Active Observation is not just taking notes. It's deciding what you should see and then looking carefully for whether you see it. It's thinking about what mistakes might occur and being ready to respond. Crucially, Julia's ability to observe and assess what's happening begins with the exemplar she's planned (technique 1, Exemplar Planning) and that she carries with her as she goes. To observe effectively in real time, you must think through what you'll look for in student work beforehand.

Let's focus in on how Denarius uses his exemplar in the clip Denarius Frazier: Remainder, which we began discussing earlier. You'll notice that he's making tiny, quick notations as he circulates, for example, in the following image.

Students are dividing polynomials and a student has struggled to find the remainder. But Denarius doesn't write “David: can't find remainder” or something like that. We know this because his notation is a tick mark, done in a fraction of a second, which thus allows him to keep circulating quickly with his working memory free. That might seem like a mundane observation but it tells us something profound: Denarius has made a list of likely errors and he's marking up this list each time he sees one. Not only can he now move quickly as he makes his rounds but as a trend in the data emerges he will see it in the data instantly. In fact in this clip Denarius recognizes that eight or nine students are struggling with the remainder and is able to target his reteach to exactly this issue—the one most relevant to the greatest number of students. He doesn't even need a step-back moment to analyze the data as we see Julia Addeo use; he simply glances at what is essentially a histogram of mistakes that he's generated as he walks. By the time he's halfway around the room much of his working memory is focused on how he'll reteach the example. And he is able to draw an excellent example from a student for a Show Call because, like Julia, this is something he's made note of.

Discussing this video afterwards, Denarius noted that his seating plan is also critical to his success. The two front corners of the room are the places he always starts his observational rounds. He sets his seating plan so the first four students he observes in each of those corners present what is often a statistical sample of the room—a mix that includes at least one student who often struggles, one student who's often typical of the group, and one who is often a high performer.

“After looking at four kids' work I often have a decent hypothesis for how the room overall is doing. I'm testing that hypothesis already as I work the first column, and by the second column I'm deciding what to do about it.”

“A lot of people think I'm tracking who got it right and who got it wrong but I track the nature of the errors I see. When I finish my observations, knowing what they misunderstand rather than what number of kids got it right is much more useful. And that, too, helps me develop my plan to reteach as I work.”

As I'm sure you're recognizing, the design of the tool you use to track and analyze data in real time is critical. The following illustration shows some examples.

In this example the teacher has to focus on who's demonstrated proficiency, student by student. It's probably a pretty straightforward skill—punctuating a complete sentence—which is why she can give it a yes/no check. This approach wouldn't work for everything teachers assess, but the emphasis on ensuring that she checks in on every student’s progress is powerful. She has also left space for narrative notes if she needs them, which allows the tool to gather both quantitative and narrative data about the work.

Story Problem: Yedidah is making friendship bracelets for her birthday party. At the store, beads are sold in packs of thirty-five. She decides to buy six packs. When she gets home, her mother suggests using twenty beads on each of her friends' bracelets. How many complete bracelets can Yedidah make for her friends?

In this example the teacher is more focused on error trends rather than individual student progress. During class she'll make a hash mark each time she sees a mistake, regardless of who made it, so she can sum things up quickly at the end of her circulation and determine what she needs to review. Again, there's room here for narrative detail. Denarius's tracker likely looks similar to the one we see above.

This exemplar also offers insight into how teachers plan when they will gather key data. Notice the difference here between Error 2 and Error 3. Clearly these are two pieces of the same math problem, but the teacher has divided the errors into two separate rounds of observation. Julia Addeo told us something similar when we spoke to her. “I'll always include the laps that I make. So on lap number one I'm just coming around to look at your multiplication. Or I'm just coming around to just see how you isolated the variable. I'll include that for most essential questions on either a Do Now or a problem set.” In other words, she's not looking for everything at once but imagines a series of observational rounds, each focused on a slightly different aspect of the task.

“I check every student multiple times during math block,” fourth-grade teacher Nicole Warren told me (you can see her Active Observation in the video Nicole Warren: Keystone). “I first observe for procedural norms, including marking up the problem and labeling work. Then I circulate for conceptual understanding and record which students are on track, which students have basic mathematical errors, and which students might have a deeper conceptual misunderstanding. This helps to make the plan for the discussion and also helps build accountability around student work.”

“When students know you'll be circulating to them every couple of minutes,” Nicole Willey said, “they work quickly and efficiently. They love being rewarded by a smiley face on their paper or a high-five. [The joy students feel in Nicole's small notes and appreciations as she observes is extremely evident in the video.] There's also a lot of celebration around success and growth. At the end of the (class) each day, I announce which students achieved 100 percent, as well as which students improved. Students are highly invested in this moment of public recognition. We also have group goals that if, as a class, we get 100 percent on each of the questions the class gets a special prize. These incentives, while external, build a sense of community and showcase that working hard leads to long-term success.”

Often teachers make their observational focus transparent to students. “I'm coming around to look at your hypotheses,” they might say. At that time they'd try to give feedback only on that topic before adding additional rounds; for example, “This time I'm coming around to see whether you have described clear experimental and control groups.” This influences student actions even before they've given any feedback. Students see their teacher approaching and think about their hypothesis because they know she will be looking for it. Perhaps they focus on it more in the first place. Teachers influence students to focus on key tasks when they tell them that they are looking for them.

You can see evidence of these actions in Rafael Good's tracking sheet from his math class. He's worked the problem himself so he can use his own model to see gaps in student thinking more quickly, made notes on delivery moves (“Show Call exemplary work!”), and notes the time allocated for the work (“4 mins”) so he doesn't lose track. He's written out the initial phrase he wants to say when he sends students off to work (“Make sure to show multiplication steps”) and finally his Lap 1 focus (“L1”). He's written out the exact phrase he wants to use before he starts observing—“Checking for your multiplication steps to be written out.”

Focusing on limited and specific priority elements when you give feedback makes it easier to give immediate feedback to every student and, perhaps unexpectedly, this is often helpful in building relationships. The most important and genuine tool for relationship building is something you might call relational teaching—using the way you teach the content to build trust. Trust comes when your teaching demonstrates your skill as a teacher and your interest in and ability to help students learn. Giving effective and precise feedback communicates to each student:

· Your success is important to me. I am aware of your progress in this endeavor.

· I will help you succeed.

· I believe you will succeed.

That is more important in the long run to building trust with students than whether you chat with them in the hallways or ask them about what shows they like to watch. And it ensures that the relationships we build are about learning and the topics we study.

In Culturally Responsive Education in the Classroom, Adeyemi Stembridge writes, “Depth of learning requires that students enter into a meaningful relationship with the content itself. … This is most often profoundly facilitated through modeling of a relationship with content by teachers.” Relationships are valuable because they are “the channel through which investment in school is personalized.”

The quality of feedback enabled by ActiveObs, effective, focused, informed by an understanding of each student's learning, brings the interconnection between student, teacher, and content to life. Consider the dynamic between students and teachers in the video Active Observation Montage. The three clips are a case study in relationship building. In the first classroom, we see Nicole Warren giving feedback on a math problem. “Super smart,” she says, “going and checking every answer choice while you have extra time… . Really nice.” The smile on the student's face lights up the screen. Though Denarius Frazier's style is a bit more muted, he too pauses at every student, commenting not just on their work in the moment. “Killing it,” he says, as he delivers a fist bump and a smile. His “much better” shows that he knows where his students struggle and therefore is able to celebrate growth. Tamesha McGuire's first-graders get the same mix of affirmation—“Nice work, my love!”—and meaningful, targeted feedback.

I should note that people sometimes confuse Active Observation with “aggressive monitoring,” which is a term Paul Bambrick-Santoyo has coined to describe giving feedback to every student using a monitoring key over a series of specific rounds or laps. Much of the guidance I've provided here reflects Paul's insights and the implementation of teachers trained by him, so I hope it's clear that I see immense value in that approach. Teachers should use it! But it's also important to recognize the value in balancing it with a broader array of data-gathering approaches. Using Active Observation therefore includes also using alternative approaches to giving every student immediate feedback as you observe because alternative observational tools can create balance and emphasize different aspects of the learning process. The following chart provides three options for Active Observation:

Though Option 1 is often excellent, one limitation—and therefore one reason to occasionally balance it with other approaches—is that the need to get to every student can lead to rushed feedback or a tone that feels hurried or transactional—it feels like the teacher's goal is to get around the room.⁷ This can crowd out time for questions, for example. There may be times when you ask students to hold their questions—the data could be more important—but there will also be times when it's valuable to respond and linger. Sometimes it's valuable to give feedback right away but sometimes it's appropriate to let students struggle for a bit and not receive immediate feedback on their progress.

It's worth considering that Option 1 could be adapted. You could, for example, still try to observe and gather data from every student's work but not try to give live feedback as you circulate, giving feedback only to the group at the end of your lap. This would allow you to make independent work feel more autonomous for students. Careful observation accompanied by silence can be powerful, especially if your feedback to the group makes it clear you were observing carefully. Perhaps you want students to struggle a bit or not know right away whether they are on the right track. Not attempting to give feedback as you circulate could also allow you more time and working memory to observe trends and issues in student work. On the other hand, you might risk allowing individual errors to persist and/or students not feeling the same level of support and/or accountability, so it is important for you to choose intentionally, based both on the objective for the day and the moment in the lesson, as well as what you see as you observe.

You can see a strong example of the quieter approach to ActiveObs in the clip BreOnna Tindall: ActiveObs cut from her seventh-grade ELA classroom. As the clip opens, students are reading and annotating a short nonfiction text about the concept of “blind justice.” This is part of their larger reading of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. BreOnna, clipboard in hand, is circulating and reading over students' shoulders, occasionally nodding appreciatively as she comes across ideas that will be useful in the discussion. “I'm treasure hunting,” is how BreOnna described it. “I'm looking for the pieces of the conversation that I'm going to highlight so we can come to those key understandings in the lesson.”

Her route around the classroom seems planned but not rushed, and she doesn't pause to read every student paper. Most students do not get feedback. Her goal is to inform the coming conversation. So she's still taking notes and she still occasionally asks clarifying questions (“What's this underline mean here?”), but mostly they are intended to ensure that she understands what students are thinking, rather than to give them guidance. She's noting ideas rather than addressing misconceptions. When she writes on her clipboard, she's not tracking every student's accuracy, but rather taking notes on the trends she's seeing and highlighting students she might choose to call on later in discussion. In the subsequent discussion, you can see the results of BreOnna's ActiveObs. It's a great example of “hunting, not fishing.” BreOnna calls on Adriel, whose answer she knows is a good starting point, then Renee, who she knows has used the word “exonerates.”

“I try not to go for the kid who has the all-the-way right answer first,” BreOnna said. “I try to find people who have pieces of the right answer. As opposed to saying ’build’ arbitrarily, I try to find people who have pieces of the right answer so they can really understand how a discussion works—what does it really mean to build?”

BreOnna's observation allows her to honor student voice but still curate the conversation for focus and quality, and, she noted, it allows her to ensure that students hear a high-quality response without having to provide it herself. “I don't always want to be the person stamping the right answer—that's boring! Also, that takes away the kids' belief that they know,” BreOnna said. “I try to find other kids in the classroom to unearth the key point.”

ActiveObs in the Early Grades

You can see another example of a quieter form of ActiveObs in the video Narlene Pacheco: ActiveObs. She's done a great job of Standardizing the Format in her kindergarten classroom at Immaculate Conception School in the Bronx. Everyone's workspace is set up the same—clean and tidy. It's easy for her to see what she's looking for at a glance. She circulates around the room carefully but doesn't give feedback to every student. Instead, she's looking for overall trends, and she shares a reminder about that (make sure you're going from left to right) to the whole class. She's already adapting her teaching to the data. Perhaps because what she's looking for—and the range of possible errors—is smaller, she's not using a clipboard. But she uses a hint of Affirmative Checking—“Hands on your head when you are ready.” Students can signal when they are ready to be checked. This lets her know where to look first. She spots Clara struggling and uses Break It Down (technique 37) beautifully for her, prompting her to find the error for herself. This is successful in part because Ms. Pacheco shows such patience and emotional constancy. But it's also worth noting that she has lots of time to spend with Clara, in part because she's not trying to give feedback to every student. On the second round of observation—for the word “yet”—you can see that she's deliberately checking back on Clara to see how she does. Clara's got it, now. She smiles and Ms. Pacheco is sure to reinforce her success.

To return to Adeyemi Stembridge's observations about the nature of relationships, the responsibility of being a teacher lies in building students' relationships with learning and content. Their relationships with us are the means to achieve that goal. The strongest and most productive teacher relationships are built by establishing a triangle in which we connect to students and (help to) connect them to content.

We are conduits, in other words. If students do not develop a valuable relationship to the things they study in school, their relationship with their teacher will not have accomplished its full purpose. This challenges us to resist the desire to be the center of the story; the goal is not to be loved and remembered forever but for students to take away a belief in their own capacity, to value the process of learning, and just possibly love or at least appreciate deeply the ideas of science, math, music, or literature. ActiveObs is a primary tool teachers can use to help relationships serve this purpose.