Aligning Purpose and Learning Goals: a Model from the Spanish PLC

by Dean Burrier Sanchis

The Elk Grove HS Spanish PLC team of Leslie Guimon, Pam Coté, Carmen Ruíz, Effie Kalkounos, Diana Cappelen, Ricky Castro, Dean Burrier Sanchis and Chris Cirrincione came together for a full-day department meeting in the CollabLab this past Monday. Our scope was very grand as we set out to establish our standards of expectations for our department, analyze our global approach to assessments, grading, gradebook setup, rubric usage, student engagement and overall department goals. Amazingly, we addressed and came away with some great tangibles for each and every one of those areas. Our fearless PLC leader Leslie Guimon took copious notes on the walls of the CollabLab, to the point of literally filling the entire wall, a testament to all that was accomplished.

The team began with brainstorming and note-taking

Certainly our greatest takeaway was the set of internally defined standards that we discussed, devised, wrote out and revised as a team. Our team was able to create a common vision for what we want our students to come out of our program possessing as students. Every team member had a hand in our penning of our Department’s 5 “Enduring Understandings”

The first major step was to define their purpose and learning targets

After creating this set of standards, we went through our assessment categories in our gradebooks and revamped our department wide setup to better reflect the new Enduring Understandings we had created. From there, we went through a backward alignment process from AP down to Spanish 1 to explicitly define the areas and ways we would be addressing the Enduring Understandings as well as our goals and curricular connections to the Understandings at each of our Spanish levels.

Final version of purpose-filled curriculum in a Google doc shared with all team members

Leslie’s notes document just how much we were able to accomplish. Chris Cirrincione took notes electronically and created a great visual representation of our results for today. Pam Coté treated our team to lunch where we continued our ongoing dialogues and renewed our energy. We found the environment of the CollabLab to be very well designed to fit our needs and handle our team’s drive and inspiration. Additionally, Linda Ashida and Kirsten Fletcher helped by adding their support and perspective to our conversations adding their vast experience and pedagogical knowledge, much to our benefit, as well offering suggestions for the uses of technology.

Peer editing to improve writing

by Kirsten Fletcher, Anna Izzo, Carmen Ruiz-Bergman

Want to know how great teachers encourage great writing? I've encountered some amazing examples in my own department of how to front load instruction and use peer editing to improve students' writing. Check out the different ways you can apply peer editing to your own classes!

Anna Izzo - AP Italian

I overheard Anna Izzo talking about how she was preparing her students to tackle the interpersonal writing section of the AP Italian test. She not only graciously invited me into her class to observe this engaging lesson, but she also wrote the following explanation of her process.

First, students became familiar with the AP rubric.

There is a section of the AP test in which students need to write a formal email response.  I decided to take a day for 'email bootcamp;' we started by dissecting the AP rubric and underlining key words.  Then we read the email prompt for the 2013 test and 3 student submissions.  We read the student who received a 5 together and discussed why he or she earned a 5.  Then I gave students 2 more student submissions they had to grade and prove why.   That lead to a great discussion. The next step was now to write their own with a different prompt.

Students evaluate peer writing

The next day we began reviewing some concepts from yesterday.  Then students switched emails with a peer to grade.  In front of them, they each had out the AP rubric and a check list from me.  The checklist is something I've used before; it's simple.  They just have to check for the different parts of the email response that must be included.  For example, is there a formal greeting- yes or no.  After completing the checklist, they then have to give their peer a grade on the AP scale and defend why.




Carmen Ruiz-Bergman - AP Spanish
Carmen just presented this idea as a Spark Session at our Teacher-Led Institute Day. (Click here for our blog post containing information and resources from all the Spark Sessions.) She then followed up by leading a Learning Lab. I was impressed with how much time she spent familiarizing her students with the rubric and teaching students to self- and peer-assess prior to ever having them write a formal essay. She said that by front-loading her instruction this way, the end result was a high quality essay that kids were confident about writing.

Carmen credits the idea and some of the resources for her work to another Spanish teacher, Señora B, whose blog has an amazing amount of resources for World Language teachers.

The first thing she did was to have students evaluate a writing sample from a past AP Spanish test. She gave students a modified version of the AP rubric, had them read an essay, then try to determine what grade it had received. The discussion surrounding this activity familiarized students with the language of the rubric and with how is should be applied to writing.

AP Rubric rewritten as a checklist

Peer assessment form

Next, Carmen gave students a practice essay and had them write in class. When finished, before she ever graded the essays, Carmen gave her students a self-assessment worksheet. It contained the same language as the AP rubric, only it was presented in checklist format to make it more user-friendly. First, students assessed their own work. Then they got into groups. On the back of the self-assessment worksheet was a similar checklist, broken into different skills for peer assessment. Students passed their essay to a classmate who evaluated it for only ONE part of the rubric (i.e. task completion, sentence structure, use of texts, etc.) The essay then traveled around the group. Each time, a different student assessed it for a separate skill. In the end, each student received feedback from at least 3 peers. At this point, the teacher had not yet graded a thing, but students had already received meaningful feedback!

Carmen did give her students personalized feedback before they wrote their summative essay. However, she just gave them a checklist with what they needed to improve since they had already received meaningful, descriptive feedback from their peers. On the day of the summative writing assessment, students were allowed to refer to their practice assessment and feedback. The advantages of this approach are many. Students not only reflected on their own work, they also had to think about how the rubric applies to writing. By having multiple peers grade each essay, every student was likely to get at least one set of really quality feedback. Carmen reports that the time spent teaching students to self- and peer-assess was worth it because the essays that she received were much stronger than the previous year.

Peer Observation: Round 2 (Post 4/4)

Period 7
We had two visitors join us this period: Cliff Darnall and Courtney Lavand.  Though unplanned, the theme of our Period 7 observations was activating background knowledge.  In both Lindsey Bucciarelli's Human Geography class and Señora Carmen Ruiz-Bergman's AP Spanish class, we observed numerous methods of brainstorming to initiate discussions.

In Human Geography, we saw students developing lists in Notability of why people migrate.  There are the "Pushes" and "Pulls" of why people leave home or come to a desired land/country.  Students also took a matching quiz on Schoology to ensure student understanding of these various push/pull factors.  Then, students watched a 5 minute video clip summarizing the situation in Syria.  After the video, students were going to work on a Jigsaw in pairs to explore the different elements of migration.

        

In AP Spanish, we observed students exploring the facts of Halloween vs. Día de los muertos.  Students were watching a video describing some of the rituals of both celebrations and then were going to write a persuasive essay where they had to choose one day to celebrate.  

Following the observations, we discussed the different methods both teachers used to activate students' background knowledge on the subject manners.  We also talked about the use of Schoology and Notability to record (both written and verbal) student learning.

Period 8
Matt Bohnenkamp joined our group for observing Sr. Burrier-Sanchis and Lindsey Bucciarelli.  

In Sr. Burrier-Sanchis's AP Spanish Literature class, they were discussing the novel Into the Beautiful North.  Students were discussing various adjectives that they could use to describe the novel.  Following the quick discussion in pairs, Sr. Burrier-Sanchis showed students the website wordreference.com to use as a thesaurus for multiple languages.  

Observations in both classes sparked great brainstorming sessions about scaffolding and other connections on the CollabLab's dry erase wall!  Stop on down to check it out and add more ideas!

Peer Observation: Round 2 (Post 3/4)

Period 5

Christina Barnum invited us into her freshmen biology class.  They used Socrative as a self-assessment tool before starting a lab.  Socrative engaged the students because it provided instant feedback on content that would be needed to complete the lab.  

Period 6
Carmen Ruiz-Bergman invited us into her AP Spanish class.  They were discussing and learning about the commonalities and differences between Halloween and Dia de los muertos.  Students had studied the traditions of Día de los Muertos, but did not really know the history behind Halloween. Therefore they were asked to research and record their findings in Notability in order to write a cultural comparison between the target culture and their community.  Some of the pieces they looked at were:

       

A.  la historia

B.  la corrida

C.  la tumba / los cementerios

D.  "Trick or Treat"

E.  Tradiciones

F.  Etc.