Examining Student Work

1. Examining Student Work

2. Examining Student Work • Explore looking at student work as a strategy for teacher learning. • Engage in examining student work. • Discuss implications for teacher learning. • Learn about protocols and facilitation. Ensuring Teacher Quality Leader's Resource Guide: Examining Student Work

3. Why look at student work? • Reflect on evidence of student learning. • Reflect on intent of task. • Reflect with colleagues. • Reflect on evidence of effective teaching. • Increase teachers’ knowledge. Ensuring Teacher Quality Leader's Resource Guide: Examining Student Work

4. Purposes for Looking at Student Work • Determine the nature and extent of student understanding. • Judge the quality of a task. • Determine the implications for instructional practice. • Clarify learning expectations. Ensuring Teacher Quality Leader's Resource Guide: Examining Student Work

5. Looking at Student Work: Format • Identify the purpose, focus, or goal for looking at student work. • Select student work that relates directly to the goal and outcomes. • Engage in facilitated discussion of participants’ interpretations and understanding of the student work samples. • Reflect on the implications and applications of what is learned to teaching. Ensuring Teacher Quality Leader's Resource Guide: Examining Student Work

6. An Example: Context • Who: High school Algebra I teachers • What: Examined their students’ proficiency data • aggregated three-year trends • disaggregated by race, sub-skill areas, and item-level analysis • Conclusions: • 35% of students at or above proficiency • achievement gap between white and African American • 17% of students proficient in TAKS Objective I: The student will describe functional relationships in a variety of ways. • greatest need in representing relationships among quantities using [concrete] models, tables, graphs, diagrams, verbal descriptions, equations, and inequalities. Ensuring Teacher Quality Leader's Resource Guide: Examining Student Work

7. Next steps: Identify robust performance task that required students to show and explain their work. • The Algebra I teachers administered the task to their students and brought samples of student work to the next meeting. • Purpose: To determine the nature and extent of student understanding of using multiple representations to solve problems and making connections among the representations. Ensuring Teacher Quality Leader's Resource Guide: Examining Student Work

8. Ground Rules for Looking at Student Work • Be in the spirit of dialogue. • Focus on the evidence, not what you think the student knows or can do. • Put your stake in the ground AND be ready to move it. • Be aware of personal biases. Ensuring Teacher Quality Leader's Resource Guide: Examining Student Work

9. Looking at Student Work: Process • Complete the task yourself. • Determine the knowledge and skills required to complete the task successfully. • What was this task designed to assess? • Share and discuss your own solutions. • Review the TEKS and the criteria. • Does the task align with the TEKS and the selected criteria? Ensuring Teacher Quality Leader's Resource Guide: Examining Student Work

10. Mosaics problem from Algebra I Assessments (Dana Center, 2002) Ensuring Teacher Quality Leader's Resource Guide: Examining Student Work

11. Ensuring Teacher Quality Leader's Resource Guide: Examining Student Work

12. Criteria Selected for Mosaics Problem • Describes functional relationships • Uses multiple representations (such as tables, graphs, symbols, verbal descriptions, and/or concrete models) and makes connections among them. Ensuring Teacher Quality Leader's Resource Guide: Examining Student Work

13. Group Share • What are your solutions to the task? • What knowledge and skills do you need to complete the task? • Does the task assess what it is designed to assess (based on the two criteria selected)? Ensuring Teacher Quality Leader's Resource Guide: Examining Student Work

14. Looking at Student Work: Observation and Collaboration • Look at student work samples with a partner and discuss: • What skills, knowledge, and understandings do the students demonstrate? • What is the evidence? Ensuring Teacher Quality Leader's Resource Guide: Examining Student Work

15. Table Talk • What are the patterns or trends across the samples? • What are the misunderstandings and understandings? • What implications for instruction and curriculum do these misunderstandings suggest? Ensuring Teacher Quality Leader's Resource Guide: Examining Student Work

16. Sample A student work from the Mosaics problem (Taken from Practice-Based Professional Development: Algebra I Assessments TEXTEAMS) Ensuring Teacher Quality Leader's Resource Guide: Examining Student Work

17. Sample B student work from the Mosaics problem (Taken from Practice-Based Professional Development: Algebra I Assessments TEXTEAMS) Ensuring Teacher Quality Leader's Resource Guide: Examining Student Work

18. Group Share • What teacher learning could result from this example of looking at student work? Ensuring Teacher Quality Leader's Resource Guide: Examining Student Work

19. Facilitation Protocol • Identify the purpose. • Provide information on the context of the task. • Participants “do” the task for their own understanding. • Share and discuss the task solutions. • Look at the student work in small groups. • What skills, knowledge, and understandings do the students demonstrate? • What is the evidence? • Share and discuss in large group. • Summarize learnings and questions. Ensuring Teacher Quality Leader's Resource Guide: Examining Student Work

20. Facilitation Tips • Take the time to do and discuss the task. • Stay focused on the evidence. • Separate observations from inferences. • Ensure time to discuss classroom implications. • Summarize learnings and questions. Ensuring Teacher Quality Leader's Resource Guide: Examining Student Work

21. Guidelines:Samples of Student Work • Several samples from different students • Samples from one student over time • Randomly selected • Representative of low-medium-high quality work • Representative of specific student misconception • The work represents a confusion or question for the teacher Ensuring Teacher Quality Leader's Resource Guide: Examining Student Work

22. Selecting Samples of Student Work • Problem: Teachers are often most comfortable sharing their best student work. • Solution: Provide guidelines. • 2 samples that show that the student “gets it” • 2 samples that show that the student does not “get it” • 2 confusing samples • 2 interesting or unusual samples Ensuring Teacher Quality Leader's Resource Guide: Examining Student Work

23. When to Examine Student Work • At weekly department meetings • During grade-level meetings • During ongoing study groups • In K-12 cross-grade group meetings • When selecting or implementing new curriculum • As part of a larger professional development effort Ensuring Teacher Quality Leader's Resource Guide: Examining Student Work

24. Information and Resources • “The Tuning Protocol: A Process for Reflection on Teacher and Student Work,” Coalition of Essential Schools www.essentialschools.org/cs/resources/view/ces_res/54 • “Looking at Student Work” website http://www.lasw.org • Algebra I Assessments and TEXTEAMS Practice-based Professional Development: Algebra I Assessments (Dana Center) http://www.utdanacenter.org • Algebra II Assessments and TEXTEAMS Practice-based Professional Development: Algebra II Assessments (Dana Center) http://www.utdanacenter.org Ensuring Teacher Quality Leader's Resource Guide: Examining Student Work

25. Reflection • What teacher learning might result from this strategy for professional development? • How and when might you engage teachers in examining student work? • What structures or supports would need to be in place for this strategy to work in your context? Ensuring Teacher Quality Leader's Resource Guide: Examining Student Work