What Makes A Good Assignment: Here's What Teachers Think
The first step toward achieving "good work" from students is to provide them with "good assignments." This connection is becoming more and more apparent thanks to the work of Kati Hacock at Education Trust, Denni Palmer-Wolfe in Chicago, the Annenberg Institute at Brown, and CRESST at UCLA.
Some of the most compelling evidence comes from the Ed Trust study of schools in Boston, where for three years students who had effective teachers were compared to students who had ineffective teachers. The difference in performance of those two groups of students was 50 percentage points on standardized tests. This makes a powerful case that teachers truly have an impact on what students learn.
For the past several years at Focus on Results, we have pursued a deeper understanding of the characteristics of good assignments with schools and school leaders across North America. We have found this topic to be one that teachers instantly recognize as crucial, yet repeatedly acknowledge as one they have never systematically studied or discussed with colleagues. Staff developers, principals, and teacher leaders may benefit from some suggestions on how to engage teachers in this important conversation.
For the past several years at Focus on Results, we have pursued a deeper understanding of the characteristics of good assignments with schools and school leaders across North America.
In this article, we will present a simple format we use to begin a conversation about the characteristics of good assignments. We will then summarize the most common characteristics of good assignments that teachers have identified after some reflection and study.
Teachers give assignments to students every day; they do have some understanding about the quality of those assignments. However, when asked to think about a good assignment they had recently given, most teachers we have worked with judged quality based on the reaction of students to the assignment. We heard comments like, "My students really like this assignment. They were very engaged in the assignment and had lots of questions about it."
Due to the fast-paced nature of most classrooms, teachers rarely had an opportunity to reflect on the assignment and what it was that engaged students. These assignments were often not developed by the teacher, but were part of the regular classroom curriculum, outlined in a teacher's manual.
Even in this age of supposed standards-driven education, it seems that most assignments teachers give are "because that's the next page in the book." Because teachers regularly give assignments, and because they seldom have time to reflect on the characteristics of those assignments, the Focus on Results approach begins by providing some sheltered time for teacher dialogue.
Even in this age of supposed standards-driven education, it seems that most assignments teachers give are "because that's the next page in the book."
We prefer to have teachers work in small groups of four or five, with several groups in the same room. These groups might be composed of grade level teams or cross-grade articulation teams at elementary schools, or department teams or grade level cluster teams at secondary schools.
The grouping depends on the teachers' level of familiarity with collaboration activities and the general level of trust in the school culture. After a brief introduction about the importance of providing good assignments, each group is asked to talk together about what they think are the characteristics of good assignments.
One person in each group serves as recorder to capture the group's thoughts. After about 15 minutes, the groups report what they know or think they know about the characteristics.
These ideas are charted as they are presented. Usually, we accept one suggestion from each group in a round-robin fashion until all ideas have been charted. This often leads to a very powerful list, as it represents the combined experience and expertise of all teachers present.
The list is then posted where all can see and time is given for clarifying discussion of each of the characteristics listed. We are not lobbying for inclusion at this point, just seeking to have consistent understanding.
The next step in the process engages the teachers in examining what others think about good assignments. For this, we use both publications and examples. Using graphic organizers to help capture key ideas, each group is asked to read the articles and discuss the ideas presented to them.
As part of the discussion, they are asked to compare the ideas in the publications with the characteristics posted on the charts, identifying those that the publications reinforce, those the publications present that are not listed on the charts, and those on the chart that are not presented in the publications.
After some whole group discussion about those three comparisons, the group decides on any changes they want to make to the charts. This same process is then repeated using some examples of characteristics of quality assignments collected from other schools.
This step concludes with consensus on each of the characteristics of good assignments that remain on the charts, assuring participants that the list will be revisited in about six months, after each team has used it a few times.
The charts are then titled the "First Draft of Our School's Characteristics of Good Assignments." At this point, teachers are encouraged to go out and use this draft of characteristics as they design their lessons.
About two weeks later, the teams meet again and are introduced to a "Protocol for Examining Assignments," which they practice by using a few sample assignments. This more-objective process is less threatening to teachers as they begin to open up their practice to inspection by others.
The intent is that teacher teams will meet regularly to continue using the protocol as a precursor to learning and implementing a full "Looking At Student Work Protocol." A Facilitator Guide for each of these protocols is provided to participants, with simple steps listed below:
The implementation of these practices has influenced many schools in powerful ways. One school in California has a focus on critical thinking and problem solving. The teachers at this school have begun sharing "Good Assignments" at faculty meetings — requesting feedback to strengthen the assignments.
A high school in New England developed a list of characteristics that helps drive their lesson planning as they implement their school-wide focus on Purposeful Writing in all content areas. The same characteristics impact lessons in English Language Arts, Math, Science, English Language Development, and Music.
This has led grade level teams to begin co-designing assignments that are more integrated, complex and extended — usually taking a week to complete — that they use with all their classes, comparing the student work afterward.
A high school in New England developed a list of characteristics that helps drive their lesson planning as they implement their school-wide focus on Purposeful Writing in all content areas. The same characteristics impact lessons in English Language Arts, Math, Science, English Language Development, and Music.
Using this process with thousands of teachers has led to the identification of several characteristics of good assignments that may be helpful to describe here. All of the schools involved are public schools in the United States, Canada, and the world-wide US Department of Defense schools on military bases.
Some of the lists were generated by school leadership teams and some by whole faculties. Regular education teachers, special education teachers, resource and support teachers, and administrators were involved.
The sample includes lists from elementary schools, middle schools, junior high schools, and high schools. Interestingly, there is very little difference between lists generated by the different levels.
According to our results, a good assignment:
Taken together, these characteristics create a guide for powerful teaching. If every assignment, in every classroom, every day included most or all of these characteristics of "good assignments", we might be well on the way to seeing a dramatic increase in "good work" from our students. This will not just happen by itself, though. Intentional leadership is necessary to engage teachers in collaboratively identifying what characteristics of good assignments are, and in assuring the implementation of those characteristics on a regular basis.
Written by Jeff Nelsen, in collaboration with Amalia Cudeiro, Jan Leight and Joe Palumbo.
The authors are all former principals and central office leaders who are currently Senior Executives with Focus on Results, an international consulting firm working with school districts dedicated to finding results-oriented solutions to the challenge of educating all students at high levels.