Joshua Forsythe Blogs

  Week 6: Engage Students in Metacognition and Reflection November 23, 2023 In Chapter Six of Rigor by Design, Not Chance, Karin Hess discusses the importance of engaging students in metacognition and self-reflection throughout their academic careers. Metacognition refers to the ability to think and create about one’s thinking processes and be aware of them. Planning, monitoring, and developing personal strategies can help boost individual learning. “Metacognition happens “in the moment” during learning” (Hess 2023). This will allow students to look at their own learning, review what evidence to look for, and make a statement on how to move forward in the best possible way.  Karin stresses the importance of engagement and how we must bring a better focus into the classroom. I found it interesting as she discussed engagement and how students are usually minimally engaged or slightly interested in what is being taught. Students look for teacher grades and not necessarily the con...

  Week 5: Design Complex Tasks November 17th, 2023 In Chapter Five of Rigor by Design, Not Chance, Karin Hess discusses the importance of designing complex classroom tasks that involve more than basic-level thinking and recalling facts. Complex learning involves higher-level thinking skills, critical analysis, and problem-solving skills to tackle these tasks, creating engaging assignments or activities to activate these skills and to build upon existing skills. “The point I think he was making is that when we can tackle much more complex, performance-based tasks when we work on them with others than we can if we work on them alone…”(Hess 2023).  Students learn to break down information and take it to the next level.   Karin Hess talks about performance-based assessments and how it is essential to student growth and deeper-level thinking. There are three versions of performance-based assessments: PBA 1.0, PBA 2.0, and PBA 3.0. Below are the three types and their des...

  Week 4: Considering Strategic Scaffolding November 10th 2023 In Chapter Four of Rigor by Design, Not Chance , Karen Hess focuses on the importance of strategic scaffolding, and how to teach these strategies for student academic growth. Scaffolding is essential for many reasons, but mainly because it supports cognitive development, practicing and learning new skills, and guides students to individualize and practice independent learning. She discusses four different structure scaffolding strategies such as:  Teacher and peer scaffolding: Teachers introduce new ideas to support student learning, such as concepts or thinking strategies, and then slowly remove them to promote student independent learning.  Content scaffolding: The teacher must introduce basic versions of content for students to use and practice, then allow students to build to more complex challenges.  Task scaffolding: Among the constant scaffolding, the teacher uses complex tasks and breaks them d...

  Week Three: Build Schemas November 2, 2023 In Chapter Three of Rigor by Design, Not Chance, Karin Hess focuses on the importance of building schemas and how important it is to create a game plan for students to interact with. Schemas develop a structure for students to interpret different information and organize their thoughts through different processes. “Schemas shape our thoughts about what we are learning” (Hess, 2023). Schemas can aid in learning new information and connecting existing knowledge, as well as working with memory storage. The other main component of schemas is the building blocks for metacognition, that holds awareness of one’s thought processes.  In my last post, I described the process of the Actionable Assessment Cycle and how it can be used. Now I am going to connect the cycle with building schemas and how practicing these strategies will support language learning and executive functioning.  Clarify learning targets : Using these targets to d...