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Student-Led Metacognition and Reflection

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  Chapter six of the book Rigor By Design Not Chance focuses mainly on engaging students in metacognition and reflection. Metacognition and self-reflection are vital skills students need to become independent learners. Metacognition helps monitor learning progress, while self-reflection must occur after learning. They allow students to be aware of their learning path, and students can recognize their contributions to it (Hess, 2023). The book also provides discourse and collaboration strategies that help students learn how to self-assess. One of the strategies is called the GPS-I Rule to structure productive group work. It involves group processing, positive independence, simultaneous engagement, and individual accountability (Hess, 2023). This strategy enhances students’ understanding of how to work constructively with peers. It allows students to be engaged in their learning and reflect on their understanding as it develops positive independence and individual accountabili...
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Creating a Fishbowl

               The book's fifth chapter, Rigor By Design Not Chance, focuses mainly on designing complex tasks and that performance-based assessments should vary. In performance-based assessments, students should apply multiple concepts and skills to the project. The students, therefore, create complex solutions. These complex performance assessments develop opportunities for students to think critically and creatively. The best way to complete these complex tasks is to work with others. On page 93, “...we can tackle much more complex, performance-based tasks when we work on them with others than if we work on them alone, especially when we’re first learning how to do those tasks” (Hess, 2023). There are many different ways to approach a complex assessment. Collaboration is an excellent way for students to understand what is being asked of them.  The chapter also discusses the importance of progression when building complex performance t...
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Breaking Down Scaffolding

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                 The fourth chapter of the book, Rigor by Design Not Chance, is called Laying the Foundation for Deeper Learning . This chapter discusses strategic scaffolding in the classroom and why it should be implemented. The chapter states, “Strategic scaffolding can advance and deepen student engagement when we start by identifying the specific goal for using a strategy and which students will most likely benefit from that support” ( Hess, 2023). As a future educator, I need to remember this to understand my goal when I implement a scaffolding strategy and how it should impact the students.  The chapter connects to the Actionable Assessment Cycle by explaining how strategic scaffolding can be applied to each stage. The stage I found to be most impactful was stage three, Uncover Thinking and Document Evidence of Learning. It provided many scaffolding strategies I could use in my classroom someday. These are the most effectiv...
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Painting Schemas

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  The third chapter of the book, Rigor By Design Not Chance, focuses mainly on building schemas into lessons and their importance in the classrooms. Schemas can be integrated for any concept but are mainly used for language arts and math. The book relates building schemas to the Actionable Assessment Cycle by explaining how schemas can be applied to deepen the student learning process. In my last post, I discussed the importance of stage six of the Actionable Assessment Cycle, but building schemas should occur in the first five stages.            A stage that stuck out to me in this chapter was stage two: Embed short-cycle formative tasks into instruction. Stage two is “Opportunities to deepen conceptual understanding help students connect ideas, explain relationships, and ask questions that reflect substantive understanding” (Hess, 2023). Schemas help make this stage more impactful. The strategies that correlate with this stage include sketch n...
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Deeper Understanding

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         Chapter 2 of the book, Rigor By Design Not Chance, focuses mainly on students learning to question and be curious about their learning. It includes three ways to ask probing questions: question sequencing, Socratic questioning, and genius hour. The chapter also provides different types of effective questioning, such as open-ended and closed-ended questions. In the chapter, I learned that you can plan questions at different Depths of Knowledge levels. In the end, it discusses the stages of the Actionable Assessment Cycle and how to apply the questioning strategies discussed throughout the chapter.  The Actionable Assessment Cycle consists of six stages:  Clarify learning targets Embed short-cycle formative tasks into instruction Uncover thinking and document evidence of learning Interpret evidence and frame feedback Determine the next steps to advance learning Use performance tasks to assess transfer and deepen learning (Hess, 2023). An essen...
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Shaping the Academic Mindset

       The first chapter of the book, Rigor by Design Not Chance, is called Laying the Foundation for Deeper Learning . This chapter discusses the six competencies needed for deeper learning. The competencies are mastering core academic content, thinking critically and solving complex problems, working collaboratively on complex tasks, communicating effectively, learning how to learn, and developing an academic mindset. These six competencies create deeper learning for students to become “actively immersed in challenging tasks that require them to seek out and acquire new knowledge, apply what they have learned, and build on that learning to construct new knowledge” (Hess, 2023. Pg. 8).        There are three essential College- and Career-readiness (CCR) skill sets to help students become engaged learners, independent learners, and self-directed learners. These help students make connections. During the learning process, the student must act...
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