A week ago I helped out in Music for the afternoon It was a great opportunity to see joy on kids faces as they sang along to animated film clips from great musicals. I was thinking about that day as I sat down to write the blog this week with the theme of using student work as a means to determine next steps in instruction. I wasn't sure what to do that day but I did know that kids love singing along and that I was going to let them. As the day went on my time with kids adjusted based on their reactions and behaviors. I make slight adjustments to remind kids of a message, following along with the lyrics, and movement or rhythm. The 30 minutes was enhanced each time I shared the music. It was more than watching and singing. It was a choice. It was what kids were looking for because I used the anecdotal observations/student work as they sang.
Reviewing student work with your PLC provides an opportunity to collaborate and reach a level of interdependence around your goal. Interdependence is defined as individual success that is contingent upon the efforts of the entire team. Therefore, when you use student work to develop lessons, success criteria, assessment, guided instruction goals or to analyze patterns you are working together to meet your goal and find what kids need. The conditions for this interdependence are based on actively engaging in team processes like setting and sticking to an agenda, using protocols and reflecting on your learning. Today we are going to do a deeper dive into using students' work and why this is critical in making higher achievement a reality.
I observed Julie Danker in 5th grade reading last week. She was engaging kids in a discussion about a passage about Frederick Douglas. She read a small portion and did a think aloud. She asked kids to read and annotate the rest of the text and then use those annotations to respond to a prompt: What can people do to bring about a positive change? The students wrote a response see below. As students were working Julie went to individuals and conferred with them.
Do you have an idea of what to write? Think about what we talked about. These are true things people can do. Did they talk about that in the text? These things have to be in the text.
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| High Proficient Example |
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| Proficient Example |
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| Approaching Example |
The result? 76% of the students were proficient on this assignment. Great News as these kids were 45% proficient on the Winter MAP assessment in Reading Comprehension. This would be a fantastic opportunity to discuss these results as a 5th grade team to see how these results could be realized in each section. The team could ask questions like how did conferring during the writing help assist kids to be proficient. & What can we learn from the approaching example? What misconceptions are you noticing?
Bri shared student work samples with me of a lesson she taught on multiplying fractions with 5th grade students.
She writes:
We are working on multiplying a fraction by a fraction; to do this students must represent the multiplication problem on the grid paper, label the dimensions and units, as well as the units in the product. S1's work reflects that of a high level of understanding. He labeled the dimensions, units, and drew an accurate representation to match. He was able to explain how the area matched his representation. S2's work reflects that of a medium level of understanding. She labeled the dimensions and units, and drew an accurate representation to match. However she simply multiplied the numerators and the denominators to determine the area and was unable to explain how the representation matched the total area. S3's work reflected a low level of understanding. She accurately labeled the dimensions, but not the units. She drew a representation to match the dimensions but was unable to determine the total area correctly.
High Proficient Example Proficient Example Approaching Example
The result? 75% of the students were proficient on this assignment. This is an incredible victory because the kids in this class were 47% proficient in Math on the Winter MAP assessment. Bri's analysis is a perfect opportunity to share with the 5th grade PLC. It allows for discussion on how to write success criteria and provides insight as to what guided instruction may look like for students who are yet to be proficient.
The work students do day-to-day is the conduit for achieving interdependence as a PLC. It gives you real time analysis and evidence that makes learning visible. It answers the question is learning taking place? and How do you know if kids are on track to learn the material needed to be proficient at grade level?
Please read through the Blog and respond as a PLC to the prompt:
Student work and assessment is a driving force for our team. We frequently talk about DFA's or common misconceptions that we found or saw. We also like to do the work of the students and look ahead so we can prepare for multiple levels of understanding. We like to have known scaffolds and supports to catch kids where they fall - whether it be manipulatives, letter charts, challenge options, or even breaking down the skill further.
ReplyDeleteAs a team we are bringing in student work to discuss common misconceptions and what feedback we can provide students to assist with proficiency. Our next steps are to look at ways to push students who are continually scoring proficient. As a team we also like to look ahead to make adjustments in our DFAs to ensure that they match our LI/SC
ReplyDeleteStudent work is a key component of our PLC's. Today, we looked at student responses to a writing prompt. We looked at success criteria and correlated it to the ISASP rubric and noted similarities and differences. This will help us ensure we are being rigorous in their responses. We looked at misconceptions and talked about how we can use language from the rubric to help students score proficiently. We will continue to look at student work to help us guide what misconceptions students have to help them perform proficiently, whether in a small group, individual, or whole group.
ReplyDelete