Launching and Consolidating Unstoppable Learning - Alexander McNeece Unstoppable Learning

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This Book’s Underpinning

      Fisher and Frey have been instrumental in helping educators around the world gain the skills to be great teachers. In their book Unstoppable Learning: Seven Essential Elements to Unleash Student Potential, Fisher and Frey (2015) describe seven elements of teaching and learning: (1) planning, (2) launching, (3) consolidating, (4) assessing, (5) adapting, (6) managing, and (7) leading. You can see how they relate in figure I.1 (page 2). All these elements are critical parts of the whole. In this book, I assume you have read Fisher and Frey’s (2015) Unstoppable Learning and dive deeper, describing launching and consolidating in more depth; other books in this series dive into the remaining Unstoppable Learning elements (Hierck & Freese, 2018; Sammons & Smith, 2017; Stinson, 2017; Zapata & Brooks, 2017).

      Source: Adapted from Fisher & Frey, 2015.

       Figure I.1: Unstoppable Learning systems thinking model.

      An important component of this model is a systems thinking approach. That approach to teaching and learning is what Launching and Consolidating Unstoppable Learning is built on. In a systems thinking approach, all the elements influence the whole concept of Unstoppable Learning. Four overlaying principles bind a systems thinking classroom: (1) relationships, (2) communication, (3) responsiveness, and (4) sustainability.

      Teachers who reflect on students’ changing needs are responsive. Educator and author Stephen D. Brookfield (2006) insists that responsiveness is crucial to building trust, which of course, loops back to relationship building. The strategies for each mindset demonstrate responsiveness, since you are responding to each kind of student’s particular needs, and that can occur only after you have established a relationship and have communicated with your students. The book’s last chapter addresses how to make this engaging instruction sustainable.

      The final principle, sustainability, is collaboration. Without the support of a team, classrooms can, through a teacher’s hard work, make extraordinary academic gains. The problem with that is that when teachers move on, students lose those academic gains. Additionally, those successes are isolated to those particular classrooms without the ability to share ideas and practices to help all teachers grow.

      Fisher and Frey (2015) propose driving questions that help keep educators focused on employing systems thinking. Systems-thinking questions for launching include:

      • “What mental models do I use?

      • What patterns and changes over time am I noticing?

      • What assumptions of my own do I need to challenge?” (p. 174)

      Systems-thinking questions for consolidating include:

      • “What are the causes and effects of classroom issues I have identified?

      • What is the impact of time on these issues?” (p. 175)

      I cannot express enough the importance of teachers using the driving questions Fisher and Frey (2015) guide us with. They are the key to reflection and are critical to you when reading this book. Later in the book, I will provide a different mental model for student engagement based on the behaviors that I witnessed as a teacher and principal, and that you can read about in research. The driving questions are there to challenge your assumptions about students and their level of engagement in your classroom. They are there to help you launch the learning in your classroom. Furthermore, the questions for consolidating learning exist to help you critically reflect on what you are doing while you teach. John Hattie (2012) reminds us to “know thy impact.” What you do in your classroom is what matters the most. You have the biggest impact on student engagement. Use those systems-thinking questions and the content in this book to help make a great impact.

      Launching and consolidating learning are elements of classroom instruction and, when done well, increase student engagement. You can think of both as a dinner metaphor. Launching learning is about preparing for a great meal. Think of when you create a feast for people. How do you invite your guests? What attentive touches do you create? What preparations have you made? Consolidating learning is the meal itself—the thing that guests bite into.

      Fisher and Frey’s (2015) model separates launching from a lesson’s instruction. This is an essential takeaway from the systems thinking model. You cannot succeed without planning for both launching and consolidating, and both exist to engage students in their own distinctive ways. Launching is the context you create for the learning, and consolidating is the work you structure with which students will learn.

      Fisher and Frey (2015) open the launching section of their book with a story of student anxiety about school. Let me be clear—the anxiety is about school, not learning. A low-engagement class or school format and structure—not learning itself—create anxiety. I have some personal experience with this as a parent. My daughter experienced severe anxiety in seventh grade. She had an advanced mathematics teacher that she, despite trying to, couldn’t connect with. Her feelings manifested into severe physical symptoms around the tests in that class. Even though she had a near perfect grade, the anxiety overwhelmed her. We had never experienced this and didn’t know the cause. She missed two months of school while we visited all the best doctors in the area. In the end, two things re-engaged her in school: the volleyball team and a different mathematics teacher. If switching teachers isn’t possible, supporting that teacher so he or she can learn how to positively engage students is critical.

       What Does It Mean to Launch Learning?

      Launching learning is how teachers introduce content in the classroom. It “marks [students’] entry point” (Fisher & Frey, 2015, p. 8). Urgently scrutinizing our education practices (Holmes, 2012) helps us better reach students. Fisher and Frey’s (2015) driving questions about this aspect of instruction promote that scrutiny: “What are my instructional goals for students? Where are opportunities to make learning relevant? What misconceptions and errors do I anticipate? How can I invite students into learning? What expert thinking do my students need to witness?” (p. 174).

      Use these questions when you are planning to launch the learning in your classroom. You’ll see in each chapter that I paid special attention to each of these questions in the teacher A and teacher B scenarios.

       What Does It Mean to Consolidate Learning?

      If launching learning is like setting the table, consolidating learning is the meal itself. Not every guest will eat every part of the meal, but each guest has a favorite. Consolidating learning is about what teachers do with their instructional time. The Unstoppable Learning model compels teachers to ask themselves the following driving questions about this aspect of instruction (Fisher & Frey, 2015): “How can I structure learning tasks to ensure complexity? How can I structure learning tasks to facilitate interaction? How can I design learning tasks to foster independence?” (p. 175).

      These questions are the crux of developing lessons that will help students build competence through thinking through complex concepts, support each other through collaborative classroom activities, and find a level of independence in their learning. Each of the chapters on the student engagement mindsets takes these questions into account when looking at the instructional strategies. Finally, I wrote

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