On Thursday, April 21, approximately 95 educators from across our district gathered in the cafeteria at Thompson Valley High School to engage in a conversation regarding Comprehensive Balanced Literacy in our learning community.  The conversations were deep, the engagement was high, the collegiality was powerful.

We are looking to extend this conversation across the district using the medium of asynchronous communication in order to capture as many perspectives as possible!   The first topic we would like to engage everyone in is Assessment.  We know that if we are going to make changes, timing is of the utmost importance.  Below, we will share the raw data collected from the evening.  At the end of this blog post there will be a box where you can add your thinking.

After two weeks a group of teachers and administrators, representative of our district, will review the original data and the additional thinking posted on this blog and work to summarize the thinking and create of 2-3 options for potential changes to our district literacy assessments, policies and practices.  Those options and summary will be shared with all stakeholders for another round of feedback.  The representative group will review the feedback and make an informed decision.  Here is what we would like to you ponder…

Assessment – The Inquiry Questions

(These questions were provided to stimulate the conversation)

1. What assessments should we use at the classroom, district, & state level?
2. Are our assessments telling us what we need to know?
3. How do we set up systems & use resources to administer & analyze assessments efficiently?

The Big Ideas Around Assessment

(This thinking was co-created during the Forum)

• Do we have any flexibility regarding how many times we assess children?
• Is there a way to balance assessment time with instruction time?
• What useful information is gained through the assessments? (early numeracy)
• For yellow zone kids, can we wait for interventions (SIPPS, etc.) to have a change to have an impact before rushing to SIT?
• Is it a district policy that yellow zone kids are not pulled from literacy block for interventions, but rather double dipped?
• Compliance – which are required?
• Different ideas/understandings, building-to-building need consistency
• Menu of options
• Is 3^rd grade over tested?  Yes!
• Over emphasis of fluency?
• Benchmarks realistic?
• Over emphasis on isolated skills – lacking authentic comprehensive assessment
• Improve efficiency of systems
• Alignment of assessments – district wide
• Probes/indicators not as useful for instructional decision making
• High level of confidence in DRA2

The Expectations We Have Around Assessment

(This thinking was co-created at the Forum)

• We want assessments that inform our instruction
• Need consistency through a checklist of assessments prior to the SIT process.  Triangulation of data AND teacher judgment
• Mandates – writing?
• Out of level testing – how do we know how much a child knows from a test with a ceiling?
• Differentiated assessments & interpretation for subgroups with diverse needs/skills
• As CDE develops new state assessments, please offer time for clarity, transition, & student/family understanding

The Support We Need Around Assessments

(This thinking was co-created at the Forum)

• Conversations/trainings around how to analyze & understand data AND how to communicate information with parents
• Need more assessments that diagnose issues for kids – DRA2, Kathy Richardson for math
• Clarity (around assessments, flow charts, etc.)
• Professional development (administration; interpreting data)
• Adequate materials for testing at grade level (enough)
• Clearinghouse for data & interpretation
• Balance out time given for administering assessment with analyzing data
• Trouble shooting when progress monitoring isn’t showing growth (now what?)
• Professional development around RCD

So, what are your thoughts?

Will you take some time to add your thinking now?  We greatly appreciate it!

On Thursday, April 21, approximately 95 educators from across our district gathered in the cafeteria at Thompson Valley High School to engage in a conversation regarding Comprehensive Balanced Literacy in our learning community.  The conversations were deep, the engagement was high, the collegiality was powerful.

Sharing and Extending our Thinking

We are using this blog to share the raw data with everyone in our Thompson community.  We invite those who were not able to attend to review the thinking of those present and share your thoughts as well.

There were nine topics discussed that evening:

• Assessment
• Authentic Literacy
• Components of the Balanced Literacy Model and the Teaching/Learning Cycle
• Family Engagement
• Intervention Model
• Materials
• Scheduling for Literacy
• Organizing the Classroom for Literacy
• Writing

Follow Up and Next Steps

First we would like to share all the thinking in this single  Document. Feel free to download and review.

With the original data in hand, and the comments accumulated over the next two weeks, members of a soon-to-be-created representative body will engage in the topic of Assessment.  This topic area presents an urgency to our stakeholders.  If we are to make changes for the 2011-2012 school year, this topic needs to be the first one discussed.

The representative body of teachers and administrators will summarize the thinking collected on the topic of Assessment and create 2-3 options for the upcoming year.  These options will shared universally and comments will be solicited in order for the representative body to make a consensus decision.

I know that I look forward to meeting again to discuss this topic.

by vistamommy CC

A big thanks to Diana Kaufman, my assistant, who typed the stacks of chart paper notes.  Thanks to all our facilitators for the evening, the custodians who helped with logistics and all the participants for taking time out of their busy schedules to attend and share.

by Z17R0

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Next spring as students across Colorado sit down to take the statewide summative assessment, they will not see the Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP) on their desks. Instead, students in grades three through 10 will take the Transitional Colorado Assessment Program (TCAP), a test that will use assessment items that are common to both the previous Colorado Model Content Standards and the new Colorado Academic Standards.

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The assessment transition plan called for CSAP to be administered for the final time in 2011 and for TCAP to be administered in 2012. In 2013, students will be given the TCAP and they will also be given pilot assessment items that might appear on the new summative assessment that is slated to be used for the first time in spring 2014.

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The TCAP will continue to assess the same content areas and grades as CSAP: math, reading and writing in grades three through 10. Science will be assessed in fifth-, eighth- and 10th-grades.

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The TCAP will maintain the same general blueprint as CSAP in terms of the overall test structure and content distribution. The transition assessment will allow for continued interpretation of results through the Colorado Growth Model and it will also allow for consistent, ongoing use of state accountability ratings.

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The transitional test will not test Colorado’s new personal financial literacy expectations or social studies. It will also not test any content standards that have shifted grades and it will not test any new learning skills that are embedded in the new standards, such as invention and information management.

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Review the CDE Press Release in its entirety…

suitcase of cotton

In our district, our secondary curriculum leaders have played an important role in helping to:

• unpack the new state standards
• make sense of their meaning and implications for our teaching, and
• align them against what we currently teach

This is an important process so that we know what we currently have that matches the new targets and what doesn’t.

In August, we should be at a place where all required courses are aligned with the new standards.  In certain content areas, like World Language and a few others – ALL courses will be aligned with the standards.  That is where we are headed…and it will take time.

Last February our secondary curriculum leaders attended a Rigorous Curriculum Design training which shared an overview of the curriculum alignment process.

• High School START Process
• Middle School START Process

In the fall we will be at the point where we will expect teachers to begin to construct unit maps using Understanding by Design principles at the building level.

My wondering is this —

1. To what degree should Dept Chairs and Coordinators be expected to help “train” others in unit based design?
2. What training do our Dept Chairs and Coordinators need to help others with the unit mapping process?

Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments stream below:

Focus by Mike Schmoker (ASCD)

Several weeks ago Mike Schmoker’s new book Focus came in the mail on a beautiful Saturday morning.  It started off as nice lazy day with no pressing deeds needing to be done, so I started to skim through the pages of the new book and was hooked immediately.

The chapter on science inquiry caught my attention, as I’ve been thinking deeply about science due in part to the dramatic changes the new Colorado Science Standards are having on the sequencing of our district content, and my thinking and wondering about how to best support our curriculum alignment and instructional needs.

It was just prior to the book’s arrival that I was invited to meet with three high school science teachers at one of our local schools.  They weren’t concerned about the new content standards, per se – but the pedagogical components necessary to meet these new learning outcomes.  You see, the science process skills are completely embedded within the three science strands of physical, earth and life science.  Inquiry is the heart of the new state standards – and professional opportunities to support inquiry in their classrooms was their request.

Immediately I started thinking about how science teachers I know might connect with his ideas.  I wasn’t really sure if they would be simpatico.  So, I asked a good friend, prolific blogger (The Traveling Teacher), and science teacher colleague of mine Liz Swanson to tell me her thoughts.

First, I wanted to know about his thinking of hands-on activities.  We do a lot of hands-on activities in our district science classes. We use FOSS kits as a foundation in our elementary classrooms, our secondary teachers design numerous labs and investigations to support a wide variety of learning outcomes.

Cornstarch and Water by GoodNCrazy (CC)

So, do you agree with Schmoker and his beliefs about hands-on activities?

“I have to say that I agree with him whole-heartedly. [Schmoker's] not saying that we shouldn’t do hands-on activities but he is saying we need to throw out the “cookie cutter” labs where the results are already known to the kids before they even start. These are not labs, they are just time filler activities. Labs need to be used strategically to discover a concept or observe something that is better observed first through visual means and then through text and discussion. I think he is just saying that science is really about answering questions and we need to use literacy practices and purpose-driven,  hands-on activities to really delve into the answers and in this way, kids can really be doing the “work” of scientists.“

Tell me more… I know when we worked together this was a big part of the context of learning you worked to create in your classroom.  What does it mean to you to engage students in the real work of scientists?

“About 4 or 5 years ago, when I was doing … training, I kept hearing [our trainer] say that kids need to do the “work” of real scientists and I was having a really hard time understanding what she meant. I just couldn’t see how [this concept] applied and what the heck the real “work” of scientists was if it wasn’t just doing experiments. Then, I started thinking about myself as a scientist of teaching, and also, I started thinking about my dad…who is a scientist…he’s a doctor.  I thought about my dad and the real “work” that he does is mostly reading. He does spend a huge amount of his time (his words) “up to his elbows in stink and blood!” but really, every night of my life as a child, I saw my dad laying in bed, reading journals. Every vacation, he read journals or medical textbooks. And, every year, he goes to multiple conferences where he always wants to go alone so he can spend all of his free time reading and studying in preparation for the lectures and the practical work. My best friend’s dad is also a doctor, and her life experiences with this were exactly the same. Both of us had homes with stacks of medical reading materials all over.”

Science Fair Wins Ribbons by Oakley Originals

So, real scientists spend mountains of time reading as well as engaging in authentic science inquiry. The theme of reading critical text runs through the entire book.  How did this knowledge connect with your thinking about teaching?

“[D]uring a coaching session… it was literally like a sudden lightning bolt of understanding – I got it….the real “work” of scientists is processing information whether that be through writing, reading, speaking, listening, or experimenting. At that point, I threw out a lot of “labs” that I had been doing that were just leftover in my classroom when I got there and had been doing because they fit the topic but weren’t really “real inquiry” and I started to really think about how I could get kids to need to read and discuss to solve more real-life problems. This has been my little quest ever since.

You know, I never remember seeing the textbook out in your classroom.  What did you think of Schmoker’s praise for using the textbook to such a great degree?

“I was definitely struck by the textbook part though and it really got me thinking about how I can use the textbook in a more strategic way. Because, he’s right, in college, and in real life, we use textbook like text to really learn new information. I always dragged out my old chemistry books to show kids how much annotation I had done in order to learn and how much summarizing I’d done in the margins, but I definitely didn’t do enough of that with them being the readers…something to think about for sure! I hope I have good textbooks in Germany because in England, I had these textbooks that were matched to the national curriculum and so they didn’t go in depth into anything because the next year’s textbook had the same info at a deeper level. So annoying. You couldn’t actually “read” the book for information. It glossed over EVERYTHING! Like “cells” was just a double page spread…not very helpful for real reading. Stuff I taught in seventh grade in the US wasn’t taught until Year 10 & Year 11. It seemed like they saved the “real science” for the exam years.”

So, you wouldn’t advocate the level of “focus” you’ve seen in the UK science textbooks written for students.  What are your thoughts about Schoker’s overall message of “focus” then?

“[W]hen you hired me to teach two subjects at the same time, I really had to think about what was essential. Basically, it was you and a few conversations I had with [others]… where I basically felt like I was given permission to cut down my curriculum to the essentials and big ideas. That’s pretty much what I’d spent the last several years working on – with the Tiger team – being as strategic as possible in what we were going to teach. I think that’s why when the new standards came out…I was pretty psyched, because they made my job a lot easier – they did what I had already largely spent years working on!”

Thanks Liz!  Thanks for being a learning and helping me think through the message of this book through the lens of a great science teacher!!!

Now, I just need to find a math, a literacy, and a social studies teacher to help me think through the other content area….

Anyone want to read this book and chat with me ?

Scott Elias, principal at Conrad Ball Middle School,  just sent this infographic to me, and it is a pretty powerful picture indeed.  I find the data about the growing population and the declining number of buildings particularly striking.

So, my question is – what will we do to ensure that online learning is effective and not just efficient?