How do you prepare for an important challenge you’re about
to face? Whether it’s running in a race, acting in a play, or taking a test,
preparation usually involves honing your skills and then applying them in
practice simulations. If you’re going to run in a 10K race, you might pace out
the course to become familiar with the hills, turns, and potential bottlenecks.
If you’re acting in a play, you rehearse the lines and stage movements with the
other actors until your actions become second nature. Test-taking and reading
practice are no different. You learn basic math and reading skills, and then
you apply those skills in testing situations, so you can be ready for the “Big
Show.”
The question is: can practice that is not laser-focused
on the task-at-hand still be valuable?
In test-world, teachers sometimes think students should only practice
their skills in the context of test-like scenarios in order to prepare for the
final Test. Many educators fear that exposing students to other forms of
assessment would confuse and distract them, or otherwise weaken their aim. But
outside of test-world, nobody seems to talk that way.
Are you a runner? Well, then, you should certainly get to
know the course before the big day, but any running you do
will be worthwhile – whether it’s directly on the course or not. In fact, there
are many benefits to practicing on a variety of terrains of varying difficulty,
because you never know what might happen on race day. What if, for some reason,
the police had to block off part of the racecourse and re-route people? This
might make the actual course on race day hillier, or curvier, or just different. The
same applies to studying, math and reading practice. If your training is too
narrow, your ability to apply your skills and knowledge in the real world of
change and unpredictability may be constrained.
Similarly, if you’re acting in a play, you should rehearse
your lines and your movements as much as possible. You should have everything
memorized. BUT…what if someone drops a line, or two, or twelve? What if a piece
of scenery falls down and blocks the exit you’re supposed to use? Anything can
happen.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, who led the Allied forces during and
after the D-Day invasion (and should therefore know a thing or two about
logistics), once said, “I have always found that plans are useless, but
planning is indispensable.” Why? Because facts-on-the-ground can change, and
therefore surely will change. Successful soldiers must be
ready for anything. Successful racers must be ready for anything. To create a
culture for successful students, we too must prepare them for anything.
Grant Wiggins used to say that every standardized test was a
transfer task. He claimed that chasing after a test and thinking you could get
your hands around it with any certainty was a fool’s errand. There was simply
no way to teach every fact and figure required by the state standards, and no
guarantee that a fact you chose to cover would definitely be included on the
test. The blueprints were simply too broad, and the previous years’ tests, if
they were available at all (and in many states, they weren’t) provided no
guarantee of what might be asked this year. Teaching fact X to prepare for test
question X was hopeless. You might hit that bullseye, but you might also miss
the target.
That is why Wiggins talked about tests as transfer tasks.
The goal, as he saw it, was to train and hone your skills like an athlete—both
narrowly and broadly; in focused drills and in madcap scrimmages. As he said:
When I was a soccer coach, I learned the hard way about my players’ ability to transfer skills from practice to a game and the need to better assess for it. The practice drills did not seem to transfer into fluid, flexible, and fluent game performance. It often appeared, in fact, as if all the work in practice were for naught, as players either wandered around purposelessly or reacted only to the most obvious immediate needs.
The epiphany came during a game, from the mouth of a player. In my increasing frustration, I started yelling, "Give and go! Three on two! Use it, use it--all the drills we worked on!" At that point, the player stopped dribbling in the middle of the field and yelled back, "I can't see it now! The other team won't line up like the drill for me!"
Seen in this light, everything that makes use of core
reading and writing skills counts. Reading graphic novels counts. Reading the
sports page of your local newspaper counts toward your reading practice.
Debating the merits of South Park vs. Family Guy counts.
Writing witty YouTube recommendations to see if the algorithm is narrowing or
broadening your interests counts. None of these things will manifest themselves
directly on any state test, or likely on any classroom test, but they all help students
practice their skills in reading comprehension and critical thinking.
Helping your parents find the best “snacks for the cost”
while grocery shopping counts toward your math practice. Arguing with your
friends about which NBA star’s shot record is better counts as debate and
critical thinking practice. Learning that when taking a position on something
like climate change in an argument, it’s incumbent on you to bring some
evidence to the table—those things count, too. All these situations that build
your critical thinking, your computational thinking, or your creative thinking
count. And yes, so does practice in the context of the Big Test, to the extent
you can predict its shape and structure. It definitely counts. It’s just not
the only thing that counts.
Learning is cumulative and commutative and strange. Seeds
you plant in one place sometimes grow into plants in an entirely different
place. It’s a sometimes-blind investment, a leap of faith. When students have
to perform in some kind of challenge, including a Big Test, they’re going to
need to creatively apply their skills and knowledge, at least to some extent.
Something will be strange and new and unpredictable. Something will not be
“lining up nicely” for them. That’s where knowledge transfer comes into play.
That’s where creativity becomes essential—because what is creativity, really,
other than the putting together of existing things in new and unexpected ways?
The more different kinds of LEGO pieces we have in the boxes of our brains, and
the more practice we have in using them to build different things, the better
we’ll be able to build when the need arises.
So, should I have my students read fiction if they are only
going to be assessed on non-fiction? Yes—not only because fiction is a good in
itself, but also because a crucial way to understand something is to contrast
it with its opposite. What can an essay do that a story cannot? What can a poem
do that neither can accomplish? Read about a single topic across multiple forms
and genres, and you’ll come to understand the super-power of each genre a
little better.
Should I give my students math problems with graphs and
images if the Big Test only uses words and numbers? Yes—if only to learn how my
students think. If my classroom test on fractions only uses numbers, and
students get the questions wrong, I might think they don’t understand the
concept. If I give them a variety of questions, using numerals, words, and
images, and find that they score higher when a question includes an image,
there’s something else going on.
Teachers and students are not archers trying to fire arrows
at a single target, losing crucial points if they miss the bullseye. That is
not how any of this works. There are hundreds of targets, each with its own
bullseye. Every arrow fired is worth the effort. Every arrow fired increases
our strength and accuracy. It all adds up.
Life is a transfer task. Everything counts.
