Up the Ante With a Quick, Co-Created Learning Progression

We’ve written a lot about progressions on TWTBlog.

Today, I offer a ready-to-go tip to ensure your teaching packs a punch. Before sending students off to write, see if they can help you turn the teaching into tangible levels that any writer could access.

Here’s an example of this concept put into practice in a second-grade setting: Our objective for this particular lesson was to articulate the external traits of a main character. To achieve this, we engaged in an interactive ‘shout-out-share,’ a culturally-responsive teaching technique developed by Sharokky Hollie. Together, we brainstormed an extensive list of descriptors, exploring the myriad ways to depict a character’s appearance. This lively exchange continued for some time, resulting in this messy creation below:

By the time we ended our shout-out share, kids were giggling at how many ideas we came up with, especially the outlandish ones like “fingernail polish” and “smell.”

Here’s a Secret: While this lesson appeared to be successful, that doesn’t always translate into students applying the concepts taught. (We’ve all been there).

That’s why I decided to up the ante. I invited students to pull out their realistic fiction stories and see how many of these adjectives they were currently employing. Most writers had 0-2 descriptors.

“That’s great!” I announced. “It sounds like you are writers who want readers to picture the characters in your story. Now, based on this list we created, do you think your audience could visualize your characters even better if we put more?”

I started drawing a progression on the bottom, and suggested that the first step on the progression (“one star”) was having one or two descriptors. The kids debated and decided what a “two star” and “three star” could look like.

“Now, earning four stars on our progression should be challenging.” I warned. “What should we do?” They started calling out crazy numbers. To get the grand effect, I slowly started writing, and they eagerly followed along as I wrote, “Do a three star… for multiple characters!” The kids gasped and cheered and couldn’t wait to get to work.

This example displays how quantifying your teaching point with a progression can motivate and engage kids. I noticed the students in the school’s gifted program were particularly fired up.

Yes, and: Enrichment is not merely about quantity. That’s why I didn’t just make the numbers higher and higher. Enrichment is challenging students to think differently, critically, and creatively. A progression is the perfect place to offer engaging out-of-the-box thinking.

Example in Action: Making the progression with students, instead of for students, lifted the level of buy-in from kids. Here’s an example from an information writing unit, where I listed seven text features and students organized them based on level of difficulty:

This small shift was more powerful than presenting students with a list of text features and encouraging them to include as many as they can.

One Final Thing: Last month, I attended the CCIRA literacy conference in Westminster, Colorado, where author Megan Freeman shared a revision strategy called “Word Wealth.” For this strategy, students earn a dollar for every syllable in a sentence. This encourages students to elaborate as they attempt to “get rich!” Assigning dollar amounts or stars makes skills tangible for students and motivates them to reach lofty goals.

Making learning progressions is important work that often involves a team of teachers collaborating and debating about a unit of study. And yet, sometimes, an impactful progression can be developed in just a few minutes with excited learners.