We are moving and shaking. It's not easy even on a good day. Let's take a moment to review and capitalize on what works.
Karin Chenoweth (The Education Trust) discusses some of the characteristics she’s identified in five districts that have been highly successful educating disadvantaged students:
• Educators know their students can achieve. This is the golden ticket. You need to be able to clearly articulate your belief as well as show evidence of how your are motivating your students. Goal setting, independent reading incentives and parent communication will make it happen.
• Principals and teachers build master schedules so teachers and students have uninterrupted blocks of teaching/learning time and teacher teams have dedicated time to collaborate. In addition, you are using your time very wisely. Less transitions. Look at the time it's taking to get kids back in the room. 15 minute bathroom breaks and eating breakfast after 905 adds up. Your PLC is critical in getting the scores your need. Make sure your are keeping up on your agenda and sharing your decision making. Finally, discuss how implementation is affecting achievement.
• “identifying the problem through data, fashioning and implementing a solution, gathering evidence about its effectiveness, and finally, extending the solution if it works or trying something new if it doesn’t.” I love how many teams have really taken the daily formative assessment and common formative assessment to task. Second and fourth grade are lifting the rigor in literacy and asking more of kids through reading response.
• Teams sit together to look at evidence of student learning – assessment results or student work – and have honest discussions about effective and ineffective teaching practices. This requires shared curriculum goals, common assessments, time to meet, and a high level of professional trust. As Oklahoma superintendent Pam Matthews put it, “There’s nothing wrong with not knowing. What’s wrong is if you don’t find out and learn.” You should have student work available at all times. I was in the fifth grade team last week. Paige had the student work available and was able to identify their strengths and potential misconceptions.
• Principals delegate responsibility for operational tasks so they can focus on teaching and learning. They don’t, as Chenoweth puts it, “major in the minors,” trying to solve every problem in their building. In addition, when effective managerial practices are identified, they are systematized across the district so everyone benefits and time is used more productively. Yes! That's you, Ana! Thank you so much for all you do to support the time I need to spend in instructional leadership.
Chenoweth says these practices provide detailed guidance on how to break the correlation between poverty and low student achievement.
It's terrific when the expert lists many of our components. It's the reason why this building has moved from the bottom of the District to the top four.
There are a lot of moving parts. The trick is to stay consistent. Remember being clear using the language of student friendly learning intentions and success criteria is the way to doubling achievement and growth in your classroom.
1st Grade:
ReplyDeleteStrengths: As a team we firmly believe students can achieve and that we make a difference. We know that making decisions based on data will get us the most growth, therefore we constantly look at DFA, CFA, and other interview data we have to guide decision making for whole group, small group, interventions, and independent work.
Areas to Grow: We feel we do a good job sending home resources and communicating with parents, however following up and getting parents involved at home is an area we would like to work on. Maybe having a family night? Or at home reading incentives or math game practice? Finding ways to get them involved and be more invested in their child's learning.
Third Grade Team:
ReplyDeleteWe spend time during each PLC discussing our DFA and CFA results, and have begun to be sure that our DFAs are truly aligned to and assessing the standards that we're teaching. While we discuss those results, we don't often bring the actual student work to our PLCs. We know that this will bring even more power to our work as a team, and our students will be the ones who benefit. We've added it to our agenda for Thursday, and will dig in then.
Kindergarten Strengths: We feel that our grade level has a strong understanding of the standards we are teaching and are able to plan and implement lessons to meet the needs of our students. Our DFAs and CFAs also show little variance between classes which would suggest that our work in PLCs keeps us aligned with each other.
ReplyDeleteGrowth: We are continually working to find differentiated centers that are beneficial to the students without being too easy or too hard for them to do independently. We are also working to find new efficient ways that parents can support their child's learning at home.
Fifth Grade Team:
ReplyDeleteWe have spent time analyzing and reflecting on our MAP scores. This data has helped us determine new intervention groups in math. We have also investigaged our CFA's. We determined on months were there in not a Unit Assessment in math, we need to create something that aligns to the standards/more standards. We are continually growing.