Goal Setting and School Wide Inquiry Work

1. Goal Setting andSchool Wide Inquiry Work September 30, 2009

2. Brain Teaser • Suzie stood before Principal Pringle and began her story, "I was on my way to school, and I cut through the park like I always do. Since I was early, I sat down on a bench to rest. I put my essay in my lunch bag, and set it beside me. Just then I noticed a black squirrel run past and scamper up a nearby tree. He was halfway up the tree when he suddenly froze and slowly backed down the tree trunk before taking off. I was curious to see what had frightened him so I looked up the tree and saw a red scarf. I climbed up to get it and just then a big dog grabbed my lunch bag with my essay in it, and ran off.” Pringle sighed and replied, “Suzie, you can’t possibly expect me to believe that one can you?” Why not?

3. Today’s Objectives • Participants will discuss school wide Inquiry Team work and it’s relationship to school goals. • Participants will understand the IQ Capacity Rubric and it’s use in moving teams through the Inquiry cycles • Participants will discuss the importance of using research • To guide the decisions around best practices

4. Guiding questions • Is the goal directly connected to our school’s needs? • Does the assessment match the needs and goals? • How will we assess the attainment of the goal along the way?

5. SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT SCHOOL-WIDE GOALS TEACHER GOALS GRADE / DEPT. GOALS INQUIRYGOALS STUDENT GOAL FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT

6. ELA Item Analysis, DRA, Acuity Predictive 70%students in grades K-5 will increase 1 gr. level on the DRA Improve inferential skills in both fiction and nonfiction. Teachers will teach 2 inferential strategies with every reading unit Stopping and jotting inferential thinking will increase students yearly progress By June 2010, I will move my DRA level from __ to _ Stop& jots, Conf. Notes, Running Records

7. ELA results indicate students need to improve their focus in their writing pieces ELA scores will increase 5% Using the 6 traits of writing, students will improve at least one level in each category Use of graphic organizers will improve students organization for writing Each unit of study will include at least 2 traits of writing I will improve my writing at least 1 level on the writing rubric Quarterly students will be assessed on the writing rubric

8. Student Goal Setting • I scored an over score of 12 on the Six Traits of Writing Rubric on my September baseline piece. By June 2010 I will score at least an 18 on the Six traits rubric. (long term goal) • I will improve my score on the Six Traits of Writing Rubric from a 2 to a 3 in the areas of Focus and Genre/Structure by the end of the first marking period. (1st short term goal to meet the long term goal) • I will do this by frequent peer and teacher conferencing to check for understanding of my writing in the areas of Focus and Genre/Structure, along with the use of the rubric guidelines. I will also use the exemplars for the writing piece as a guide.

9. Three Phases of Inquiry Work

10. School based Inquiry: What is the real purpose behind Inquiry Teams? • Improve student outcomes – Allows multiple teams, focused on additional cohorts of students, to study the most effective ways to increase achievement • Develops teacher capacity and collaboration – Empowers teachers to make decisions to aligning assessment, curriculum, instruction, and professional development • Builds school capacity – Establishes and/or deepens collaboration and communication building a professional learning community

11. Team Structure CORE TEAM TEACHER TEAM TEACHER TEAM TEACHER TEAM TEACHER TEAM TEACHER TEAM

12. Models of School Wide Inquiry • Core Team – grade level team – choose a sub-skill that can be utilized in all content areas ex. vocabulary, listening, writing development, comprehension/inferring • Core Team – department teams across grade levels – teachers choose students to study across grade levels with same sub-skill and strategy ex algebra/variable and expressions • Core Team – whole school studies same sub-skill and strategy- group of teachers working together chooses sub-group for target population

13. Guiding Questions • What steps have we taken to ensure we are selecting a target based on multiple data points? • Are we sure that the data we are using are the best match for the reason we are coming together to study?

14. Gathering Data to Identify School Needs • The most important factor in collecting data to determine the skill to be studied is ensuring there are multiple representations of data sources to make decisions around. • Use of the Attributes of Effective Data Tool • What are possible implications of primarily using data you scored as “weak” or “moderate”? • What are other data sources that weren’t listed that could be used?

15. Guiding Questions • How do we ensure that addressing the target population will address the school at large? • What could be the most diverse and representative population of the school at large?

16. Moving from Data to Action • Guiding questions can help define the hypothesis • Ex. What instructional strategies do teachers use with students who appear to have a negative attitude about school? • Have the processes used to teach English to ELL students been consistent across grade levels so each student is able to build on her/his abilities? Ideas from Teachers Guiding Questions… Hypothesis… Cycle Data…

17. Try it out • EX. The needs assessment revealed that teachers use lecture as their primary method of delivery. If… teachers rely on lectures to convey information then students…who are visual learners do not get all of the information they need? • Needs assessment revealed teachers ask questions that focus on comprehension and literal interpretation of texts during class discussion. • IF… then students…

18. Connecting Hypotheses to Goals • EX. If teachers model how to extract and reconcile information from different kinds of sources, then students will be able to effectively respond to document-based questions. • Goal: At the end of four weeks of mini-lessons and practice with different kinds of sources, students will create document based questions for the class that use all the different sources and respond to a DBQ created by their peers. Student achievement on these essays will increase by at least one level on the document-based rubric.

19. Connecting Hypotheses to Goals • If teachers increase the frequency of clear expectations (this is what I want you to do) and direct modeling (this is how I want you to do it) then target students will accurately perform the assigned task during independent work. • Goal: When observed during independent work sessions, students will be performing the assigned task accurately (matching teacher directions to student performance) during 10 out of 12 sessions.

20. Guiding Questions • How do we ensure that addressing the target population will address the school at large? • What could be the most diverse and representative population of the school at large?

21. Selecting the Students • Pick a skill based on your data analysis • Pick a sub-skill – if students learn this skill it will leverage other skills • Pick the students – each teacher should own some of the students on the team • A team can select multi levels of student achievement if the students will benefit from the sub-skill • Communicate with students and parents

22. Set Long and Short Term Goals • Decide on a goal setting format to be used in your school. • IQ goals should align with the school goals. • Teams can set short-term goals for the year aligned to meet the long term goal as long as they recognize the short-term goals may change according to student progress. • Use the SMART goal setting format. • Set a time frame for when phase1 should be completed. This concludes Phase 1, you are now ready for Phase 2

23. Making School Wide Inquiry Successful • Each team of people should have a common meeting time. • The core team will facilitate the training for new teams as well as be the conduit for communication to and from teams. • Each core team member should be connected with a team to share their expertise. • All teachers should understand the purpose of inquiry and clear expectations for the outcome of the inquiry work should be established.

24. Realistic Guide your students to be ambitious but realistic. Example: We believe our 9th graders’ ability to organize their writing is currently at about a 5th grade level because they need assistance to “Use paragraphing to organize ideas and information.” To catch up, we want them to make 2 years of progress during this school year. We set a goal that by the end of the year they are able to use paragraphing independently and “Use outlines and graphic organizers, such as semantic webs, to plan reports, with assistance”—a 7th grade standard.

25. How do we know if we have achieved the goal? • Periodic Assessments • Acuity and Scantron • Teacher-Made Assessments • Project Based Learning • Portfolios • Student Writing Samples

26. Setting long-term goals: General assessment recommendations • Use the same assessment for a baseline and final measurement. • Use the assessment that gives you the best information about your students’ learning: • A past regents simulation • A teacher-designed assessment • Another vendor assessment

27. Setting long-term goals: Scaled Score • Recommendation: Use the scaled score to set long-term goals. • Why: It measures a student’s performance against the content. • Example goal: In September, our 9th grade target population students had an average reading scaled score of 2531 (considered “at risk” for 6th graders). By June, we hope to raise each student’s score 300 points (into the interquartile range for 8th graders).

28. Setting long-term goals: Using Acuity • Use the item bank to create a customized pre- and post-assessment around the sub-skill you are focusing on. This may include a number of questions from several grade levels if a student is performing significantly below grade level. • Example goal: Students will score at least 85% on an assessment of 6th grade reading comprehension.

29. Setting long- term goals: Using DRA • A third grader is reading at level K, DRA 20 in September 09. The student is 2 F&P and DRA levels behind. A good long-term goal would be:I will move from Level K, DRA level 20 to level P F&P and 38 DRA. • A fifth grade student functioning above level at DRA level 50 and F&P at T should set an accelerated long-term goal. • I will move from DRA level 50 to 70 and F&P level T to Z.

30. Setting short-term goals: General recommendations • It is likely that teacher-created assessments will be most effective for short-term goals. • Students’ should have short-term goals based off their individual data. • The short-term goals should build up to reaching the long-term goals. • Students’ should be able to self-assess whether they met their goals.

31. Guiding Questions • If our students obtain all of the short-term goals, would they be able to perform the long-term goals? • What do you do when a child isn’t making progress on the long-term goal? • Are we obtaining balanced measures to document student attainment of the goals?

32. Short-term goals setting:DRA/Fountas-Pinnell • Third grader short-term goal – I will move from Level K and DRA level 20 to level L and DRA level 24 by Nov.(first report card date) I will do this by jotting down text to self connections and conferencing with my teacher for feedback in addition to reading at least 10 books at my independent reading level. • Fifth grader short-term goal – I will move from Level T in F&P to level V by Nov. I will do this by identifying essential details for note taking and conferencing with my teacher for feedback in addition to reading at least 9 books.

33. Goal Setting Activity • In your table groups or pairs work with the long-term student goal to make it a SMART goal. Construct the first short-term goal. • Observe the rules of punctuation, capitalization, and spelling: use correct grammatical construction. • Evaluate information, ideas, opinions, and themes in texts by identifying a central idea and supporting details. • Determine the meaning of unfamiliar words by using context clues, a dictionary, a glossary and structural analysis (looking at prefixes and suffixes)

35. Literature Search: Using Google and Google Scholar Collaborative Inquiry involves doing research on Instructional Strategies and Best Practices. Common search engine sites: Google: www.google.com Lycos: www.lycos.com Yahoo: www.yahoo.com MSN: www.msn.com Ask: www.ask.com

36. Literature Search: Using Google and Google Scholar Common Tips for doing a Google search: Video Viewing Activity: As you watch the video, write down two tips or tricks for narrowing down or improving your Google searches.

37. Literature Search: Using Google and Google Scholar Other Tips and Tricks: To find items in different formats, such as pdf, ppt or doc, follow these easy steps: In the search box type in your search criteria, for example:Collaborative Inquiry BEFORE you click enter or search do this: Collaborative Inquiry:pdf or :doc or :ppt You will narrow your searches down to those items in that particular format. For searches where you’d just like scholarly references use: www.googlescholar.comor place a :edu at the end of your search criteria for educational references only.

38. Literature Search: Using Google and Google Scholar Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet typically in the form of tags. Popular Book Marking sites: BlogMarks.Net: www.blogmarks.net Delicious: www.delicious.com Digg: www.digg.com Feedmarker: www.feddmarker.com Jumptags: www.jumptags.com