Implementing “Ready for Rigor” in the Classroom

By: Christina Williamson

University of Pennsylvania
 Implementing “Ready for Rigor” in the Classroom

As stated in The Art of Classroom Inquiry, “All teachers have wonderings worth

pursuing. Transforming wonderings into questions is the start of teacher research.” (Hubbard and

Power at 2).I recall reading this book when we were first starting the summer semester and

thinking to myself, “I am not really sure what this teacher-research thing really means.” As we

have gone through the summer, both in coursework and in our summer placements, I understand

better now. However, I am just beginning to see myself as a teacher-researcher and still have a

long way to go to before I feel confident not only in my skills as a teacher, but also being able to

build on those skills and evolve into a teacher-researcher.

At my summer placement at White Rock, I began to acquire these skills through trial by

fire. Prior to arriving at White Rock, I had not been or lived in “the City” in a long time, other

than to go to dinner or see a show. Further, I definitely did not have any experience in urban

schools or culturally diverse neighborhoods. In fact, most of my experience with schools have

been those in white suburbia, both in my own education and now, my children’s. Therefore,

Hammond’s Culturally Responsive Classroom Teaching and The Brain was something entirely

new to me. I did not realize all that goes into teaching a culturally diverse classroom or the

implicit biases and structural racialization that act as a barrier to educating in culturally diverse

classrooms. (Hammond at 29-30).

I was further struck by Hammond’s “Ready for Rigor” framework and teaching diverse

students to be independent, rather than, dependent thinkers. (Hammond at 13-14). Until I read

her book, I was not aware that culturally and linguistically diverse students are taught be

dependent learners thus contributing to the increase in the achievement gap between non-diverse
and diverse students.(Hammond at 14). One thing that has concerned me, based on what I have

seen through various media outlets, is the inequity in urban schools with respect to resources,

However, I did not realize that diverse students are routinely taught with lower order learning

methods, such as rote memorization.(Hammond at 14). This may serve them early on in their

education, but they do not acquire the advanced skills required to close the achievement gap. As

a result, the achievement gap grows wider. (Hammond at 14). Therefore, throughout my

teaching practice, my main goal is to be intentional in teaching students to be independent

learners and to bring higher order teaching methods to my classroom. I hope to start

implementing this goal at SLA@ Beeber this Fall.

Keeping this goal in mind, I tried to develop my unit plan with an eye towards higher

order teaching methods. SLA @ Beeber is a school with a diverse student body, but as a special

admit magnet school, its students are generally considered high performing. I will be teaching

9th grade African American History and 10th grade World History. My unit plan centers around

9thth grade African American History. Although I did not meet my classroom mentor in person,

I have spoken to her over the phone and via email. She communicated that each student has their

own lap top, so I knew I would have computers/internet as a resource.My mentor also advised

the curriculum is somewhat “fluid” because as a magnet school they do not need to adhere to the

strictures of the SDP curriculum. Therefore, she tends to deviate from prepared lesson plans, but

does try to maintain the overall structure of the unit.

For my first week’s unit, I chose the “Reconstruction Era”. I grappled with the idea of

doing a unit based on get to know your activities, but I found that too limiting. Instead, I chose to

prepare a more content-based unit because it was more interesting and challenging. I did,

however, include an “icebreaker” exercise on the first day in order to promote community
building in the classroom. Hammond believes classroom community building is essential to the

“Ready for Rigor” framework (Hammond at 19). Moreover, within the unit itself, there is focus

on small and large group discussion from the outset. Therefore, my thought was that students

will learn cooperation and team building skills that promote higher order thinking pretty quickly

by having to work together within these groups.

One thing I struggled with throughout the preparation was time restrictions and how to

choose what to put into the weekly/daily plan. In Integrating Differentiated Instruction and

Understanding by Design, Tomlinson & McTighe discuss the problem of content “overload.”

(Thompson, et al.at 25).I realized almost immediately when beginning to plan the unit that I

would have to make choices re: content. I tried to choose what I thought would be most relevant

to the students and also what they “needed” to take with them after the conclusion of the unit. I

found that what they “need” is open to much interpretation and debate. For example, initially, I

was not going to include any discussions on the impeachment of Andrew Johnson because it was

a very specific event that did not necessarily relate to my “Essential Questions.” However, I

realized in today’s political environment, it would be useful to talk about impeachment and what

the process actually entails. Johnson’s impeachment also illustrates the animus of Radical

Republicans towards him for his attempt to thwart their Reconstruction plan. I ultimately

decided to include it in Day 3’s lesson plan.

I also purposefully chose not to discuss economic changes during the Reconstruction era,

including sharecropping, land redistribution, etc. While these things are important, I quite

frankly thought they might be boring to students. I also thought there were so many more

relevant subjects to cover. Instead, If I were doing this in real life, I would provide students with
additional resources for review if they wanted to learn more about changes in the southern

economy during Reconstruction.

The “backward design” method of Tomlinson & McTighe was challenging. Not having

taught before, I did not have any experience to decide what “big ideas” I wanted students to

understand from this lesson or what the “essential questions” would be. (Tomlinson, et al. at 32).

Fortunately, I was able to turn to Tomlinson & McTighe’s online resources to get me started

thinking about big ideas, essential questions, etc. when trying to plan the unit. Then, once I

figured out this portion of the plan, deciding how to “teach” the material was yet another

challenge. I found that constantly referring back to the “big ideas” helped me when I felt I was

veering off course, which was frequently. Although I wanted to maintain my goal of teaching

students to be independent learners, I did not want to lose track of the “essential questions” I

thought students should be able to answer once we completed the unit.

I decided to incorporate a variety of teaching methods, including large and small group

discussion, individual work, viewing video clips and images, using and analyzing primary and

secondary sources, etc. I thought of Gardener’s Multiple Intelligences when designing the unit

and tried to incorporate activities that employed a mix of interpersonal, intrapersonal and bodily

kinesthetic intelligences. Anticipating a group of diverse learners with a variety of learning

styles and preferences, I wanted to make sure to incorporate learning routines that would

promote as many “intelligences” as possible.

Additionally, on Day 2, I included a variation of the “Step Inside” thinking routine I

read about in Ritchhart, et al.’s Making Thinking Visible (178). I hoped that by having students

“step inside” the mind of newly freed slave and then write about what the newly freed slave was

excited about, was worried about and what challenges they would face. My goal for including
this exercise was that students would consider not only the excitement freedmen may have been

feeling, but also the very real obstacles they faced going forward. Overall, I wanted to provide

differentiated classroom instruction for all types of different learners with the learning exercises I

chose, but it is hard to know what will or will not be effective, especially as a beginner teacher.

My classroom mentor told me about her experience with what she termed a “colossal

fail” last year. As part of Reconstruction, she wanted to have the students to read Lincoln’s

letters, diaries, etc. and to analyze what his motives were for his Reconstruction plan, his

thoughts about slavery, the 13th Amendment, southern reaction, etc. She thought it would be a

unique way for them to learn about Reconstruction. However, a couple of days into it, she felt

that students were just not “getting it”. She abandoned her idea and had to come up with a “Hail

Mary” at the last minute. After talking to the students, she realized that reading Lincoln was too

dry and “heady” for 9th graders but may have been a good tool for college students. What I took

from this story is that there will undoubtedly be failures in teaching, but it is always good to try

something new. I also learned to be prepared with a back-up in the event of a “colossal fail.”

SLA is a project-based inquiry school where the focus is learning by doing, rather than

traditional tests and quizzes. With this mind, I tried to design a unit plan utilizing both

individual and group project-based assignments with a focus on group and classroom

discussions. The assessment methods would be based on students’ ability to work within these

groups, the ideas they came up with and the ability to “instruct” a larger group. However, I

realized I needed a more “traditional” method of gauging students’ overall grasp of the unit. I

struggled with whether to use more traditional methods of assessment such as multiple choice or

essay tests due to the fact that most of the students at SLA will move onto college and will need
to know how to take these types of tests. However, I did not want to use such testing methods for

the first unit.

I ultimately chose a combination of an oral presentation with a written paper component

in order to address the multiple ways in which students learn. I learned through Gardener that

some students will excel at writing papers while others will excel at giving oral presentations

alone. Therefore, I wanted to provide a combination of assessment methods to address different

students’ needs. The paper portion of the assessment is short, 2-3 pages. In it, students have to

address whether Reconstruction was a success or failure for African Americans and provide

support for their position based on what we learned in the unit. The written portion will be worth

a majority of the assessment grade. However, the presentation will also be worth a small amount.

One of the reasons I chose the paper assessment is to assess students’ writing mechanics.

After reading Delpit’s, Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom, I was

struck by the disconnect across the U.S about whether to teach “Progressive” or “Standard”

reading/writing techniques to culturally diverse students. Perhaps as a result of my legal

background, I am a firm believer that students should know how to write and speak standard

English. It is a necessary skill that will serve students well throughout their lives. Although I

appreciate the idea behind the “Progressive” method, the reality is that colleges and employers

want to see documents, emails, letters, and applications in standard English. As a result, I want to

make an early assessment what writing skills my students are bringing into the classroom with

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My questions for implementation can be found on a separate Weebly sub-page.
 My intention with crafting the unit was to create an open and cohesive classroom that

would promote higher order learning and a rigorous, yet engaging, curriculum. I want learning

to be a cooperative effort between teacher and student and hope the classroom instruction I

design will accomplish this goal. I believe that the unit itself contains rich content and a variety

of learning tools to address different types of learning and learning needs that I believe will be

present at SLA. I am hopeful I will be able to actually use the design or something very similar

to it during my time as a student teacher. It would be interesting to see how the unit design

actually plays out in a real classroom and to get feedback from the students and my classroom

mentor.

References

Delpit, Lisa, Other People’s Children: Conflict in The Classroom, NY: The New Press (1995).

Gardener, Howard, Multiple Intelligences. Retrieved from: http://multipleintelligences.org

Hammond, Zaretta, Culturally Responsive Teaching & The Brain, Corwin, A Sage Company

(2015).

Hubbard, et al., The Art of Classroom Inquiry, Heinneman, (1993, 2003).

McTighe, Jay, online resources. Retrieved from:

https://jaymctighe.com/resources/#1514647183121-2174a098-07d5

Rithhart, Ron, et al., Making Thinking Visible, Jossey-Bass (2011).

Tomlinson, et al., Integrating Differentiated Instruction & Understanding by Design, ASCD,

(2006).
Weinstein, Carol, et al., Middle and Secondary Classroom Management, McGrawHill Education,

(2015,2011,2007 and 2003).