2014-15 Rigor Professional Development Unit

1. 2014-15RigorProfessional Development Unit By: Katie Hein Farrell B. Howell

2. During the course of this PDU, what three instructional strategies did I implement? What strategy worked best? Why? During this PDU, I implemented vocabulary analogies, “What’s the difference?”, and “Question That.” After having worked with new vocabulary for the week, I introduced things like “tired: exhausted as hungry: _____.” This was second grade. It was actually fairly easy for them and I think it was a great way to introduce analogies so that when they get older and the analogies get more complicated, they will have had some experience with them. I also used “What’s the difference?” as a warm-up. I had them discuss the difference between “nutrient” and “nutrition” or various other vocabulary words. It was a great way to review these difficult differences in a new way. My kids also loved “Question That.” I would write, “protein” and as an exit ticket, they would have to write a question that had “protein” as the answer. That was hard! But it was such a great higher-level thinking activity. I think “What’s the difference?” and the vocab analogies worked the best at the time. “Question that” was difficult, but I think as we do it more, the kids will get better at it and it will help them form questions and think in a different way.

3. How did I apply the PDU strategies in my classroom/practice? (examples) Who did I collaborate with during the PDU? Discuss the ways you collaborated while implementing the PDU strategies. (See slide 2 for “How did I apply the PDU strategies in my classroom/practice?”) I collaborated with my team and many of my colleagues during this PDU. Since rigor is a focus at our school, I used the opportunity to make it a focus at a data meeting and a goal for my team. We looked ahead to a lesson the next week and planned for rigor. Since our ELD groups are leveled by proficiency, I think it’s easy to forget about differentiation. I showed my team how I plan for rigor and we planned a lesson together The next week we reflected on the lesson and discussed ways we could do it in the future. I also enjoyed collaborating on Google docs with my colleagues who were all doing this PDU. We read each other’s posts and commented on each other’s thoughts and implementation. I learned a lot from them through the discussion and reflection.

4. What did I learn to do differently as a result of the PDU and strategy implementation in my classroom or in my practice? The biggest thing I got out of this PDU to do differently in my classroom is to add deeper thinking to our ELD curriculum. Since we teach language, much of the scripted lesson is simply modeling how things sound and how we can describe, compare/contrast, etc, through language. I have been working on rigor all year, so I have been adding in more rigorous ways to play with language and add details. But I started to realize how surface-level the actual thinking is. There are times during our health lesson that we can easily ask higher level, deeper understanding questions, and discuss using the language we need to teach. I started doing this due to the PDU and my kids really have enjoyed digging into the content.

5. Why is this PDU action research process important to my students learning and to my growth as a professional? This deeper level of thinking that I discussed in the last slide is very important to my kids to prepare them for college and the real world. As CCSS is trying to achieve, our kids need to learn to be thinkers. I don’t want them to just know how to describe the food pyramid, I want them to be able to analyze why we should eat more vegetables than fruits. We can’t teach them everything they’ll ever need to know in school, so we need to teach them thinking skills so they can figure things out that they need to know.

6. PDU Data AnalysisReflecting on the data you have collected, how did this experience impact instruction, progress monitoring, student performance, and your own practice? My instruction was more meaningful and interesting with some of the strategies that I implemented. Kids enjoyed the more rigorous tasks and deeper thinking. I think it impacted student performance not only through engagement, but they had more detailed answers shown in my progress monitoring. Because we dug deeper, their oral answers were more detailed, and they had more detailed writing responses. We explored the content, they connected things to life, and they shared it with me in their quizzes.

7. How will I apply my new learning in the future to further my practice? What are my next steps? We have moved on to an Ecology unit and I am already using these same strategies in this unit. I have tried “Question that,” “What’s the difference?” and analogies. Also, when a student asks a good question like, “Well who eats the beaver and who does the beaver eat?” I save it, and turn it into a deeper discussion the next day, using the language we need to practice. This is our last unit, but I know I will use these skills starting at the beginning of next year for all the units.

8. PDU Artifact #1 Students used knowledge of the food pyramid, food groups, and serving sizes to design a diet for one day getting in all the necessary food.

9. PDU Artifact #2 Vocabulary analogies

10. PDU Artifact #3 Higher level thinking and questioning that came out of our unit.

11. Exit Ticket • What support(s) do you need to further your professional growth in future PDUs? • No nonsense nurture, behavioral supports • 2 things that you took away from the PDU this year • Deep level thinking opportunities in ELD • 3 great strategies to use all the time • 1 piece of constructive criticism • I wish we learned about it way sooner so that I could be doing it all year and not just the last months