Lead Learners Wrap-Up

By The Collab Lab Team

Today we had the final Lead Learners meeting of the school year.  We started off by activating prior knowledge and sharing our successes this year:

We then had a series of lesson demonstrations.  The first was from Grove Junior High teachers Tracy Groark and Kerry Frazier who shared the evolution of how they communicate learning targets with their students and new and more intentional ways they connect instruction and assessments more to those learning targets. They both included examples of how they use Google Forms, and even Kahoot to engage students and better understand gaps in their understanding.

Leslie Guimon then shared the evolution of learning targets on the Spanish team.  She shared how the courses were once aligned thematically, then grammatically, and so on.  After discussing at length and agreeing on Enduring Understandings for all levels of Spanish, they developed clear learning targets for each level.

 

The final demonstration was from Tom Boczar.   He discussed how students in Physics classes reflect on their assessments and objectives, using a rubric to determine understanding.  Was there a disconnect or misconception about what they knew?  Was there uncertainty--a lack of confidence or guessing?  Or was there mastery.  The reflection is student-directed, and Tom noticed how important it was to students when he almost skipped the process after a recent unit.  The students objected and insisted he not skip it!

      

Following the lesson demonstrations, teachers engaged in a self assessment activity.  Each participant was asked to bring an assessment they currently use.  Using the self-assessment checklist below, teachers individually assessed the method they were using, where their targets fell, and if their assessment met four conditions for a quality assessment. The group then shared out their "A-Ha" moments about their own assessments, and plans for next steps.

This final EGLLT wrapped up with a year-end evaluation and time for teachers to collaborate in course-alike teams to continue conversations about their next steps. Feedback from staff on the evaluation will be used to plan future professional learning experiences.

Matching Assessment Methods: Lead Learners #6

By The CollabLab Team

Yesterday's focus in Lead Learners was based on these two essential questions:

1.  How do we create conditions that maximize mastery of learning?

2.  How do we maximize student learning through sound assessment design?

The majority of our time was spent discussing the concept that assessment methods are not interchangeable.  Thus, we talked about the most relevant assessment method to be used for the type of learning target being assessed.  This helps to ensure accurate assessment results.  The four assessment methods are 1) selected response, 2) written response, 3) performance assessment, and 4) personal communication.

In groups, we did an activity where we were to match the strength of each of these assessment methods for the four types of learning targets.  See the grid below:

Many of us were surprised with the research-based results (provided below).  This spurred very interesting dialogue, especially when looking at different content areas!

Following this dynamic discussion, we had four groups of teachers share lesson demos. The first was our Bio team of Quinn Loch and Krista Glosson who discussed how they restructured their standards to increase a focus on key domains.  They also shared how they report grades both formatively and summatively in a non-standards-based online gradebook to communicate the most accurate information on achievement to students and parents.

Our second lesson demo was by Kim Miklusak, discussing the evolution of changes in the AP English Language grading rubrics from 4-degrees to 3 in order to clarify definitions of mastery and proficiency.  This rubric also mirrors the biology rubric to help increase cohesiveness of skills between content areas. 

Next, Bonnie Kale shared the idea of having one essential question in Honors Written and Oral Communications for a unit.  This unifying element allows for students and teachers to synthesize information and skills in order to maintain a focus throughout an entire novel.  This also allows the team to reloop through writing and reading skills all centered around one theme.

 

Finally, Sandra Lee and Katie Winstead shared how they differentiate formative feedback in Prep World Literature.  They build in elements of a pre- and post-test as well as clear learning targets in order to allow them to modify instruction to meet the needs of a wide range of student ability levels.  Regardless of grammar ability, all students learn the same materials at a different pace and with targeted teacher support.

Thank you to everyone who presented and participated yesterday!  We are looking forward to more conversations in upcoming PLTs and at next month's presentation!  To learn more, follow the #EGLLT hashtag on Twitter or stop into the CollabLab for more conversations!

Skilled Workers

By Mark Heintz

On Monday, April 6, 2015, our district had an in-service day.  In the new contract signed last year, our Education Association and District Administration agreed to add an in-service day to the school calendar.  The day's intent was to allow teachers time to digitally convert their curriculum.   The day was great!  In the early stages of planning, I might have been a nay-sayer, but thanks to @Ashida_Linda and @MrsMiklusak, their wisdom prevailed.   In the morning,  spark sessions were given from a variety of staff members on topics from flipped classroom to the use of stop motion videos. The spark sessions flowed to two hours of EdCamp. You can read more about it here.  

Not to change subjects, but recently my history classes finished learning about the industrial revolution.  I can't help but make the connection between the in-service day and industrialization.  No, I am not talking about horrible working conditions or child labor.  I am writing on the needs for educated workers and the development of skilled laborers to work in factories.  People needed to be educated to work the complicated machines and perform a specialized job.

The in-service day showed how teaching has become increasingly skilled.  With the proliferation of technology and the ease of accessing information, teachers are shifting their role. New brain research drives educators to understand what methods work better to maximize learning.  Brain research coupled with new technology, it is hard to stay current with both the brain research and the technology.   The pedagogical techniques to meld these two together are difficult skills to master. The in-service day was great way to allow teachers to see a variety of new techniques and hear the latest brain research on effective teaching.  It was even better because the day allowed for time to development, collaborate, explore and create materials for their classroom from the new understandings they received at the beginning portion of the day.

A final thought: the day reminded my of a scene from Scrubs where two doctors are talking about how hard it is to stay up on the current research and how times have changed.  I have only been teaching for nine years, and the changes are drastic from when I first began.  I am fortunate to be in a school and district that has so many support systems in place to provide the tools and knowledge to become even more specialized and skilled in the art of teaching.  The teachers I work with constantly push me to new understandings of students and different ways to approach the subject matter.  I work in a school where teachers share ideas constantly.  It makes it easier to grow and stay current in a world that is ever changing.

How to Stay Energized

By Mark Heintz

How do you stay energized as a teacher?  Stressors emotionally drain us as teachers throughout the day.  In the midwest, it is furthered by February.  Stupid February.

The answer to staying energized is to collaborate with colleagues.  I always feel renewed when I talk about student learning in a positive way with other staff members.  When I get a new idea from them, I want to try it out. I have passion, a renewed purpose, and with the idea it engages the classroom in a new way.  I reflect on it's use, and I report back to the peer to let him or her know how I used it and what I would do differently the next time.  This is why collaborating is so powerful.  Collaborating improves instruction through bettering your craft to improve student learning in an organic and meaningful way.

Furthermore, the EGLLT (Elk Grove Lead Leaders Team), which you can read about by clicking here, met to collaborate on the topic of literacy.  Through the efforts of that meeting, teachers were exposed to a TED talk by John Hattie on Maximizing Impact on Learning. One of the great things is that when teachers work together to enhance student learning, it is one of the most powerful things teachers can do.  So, while you renew yourself, you will be impacting student learning at the same time!  Here are excerpts from John Hattie's work and the video.

If you want to watch the video or read the entire study you can use the links below to access it.  

Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning By John Hattie (Routledge, 2012)

Lead Learners and Literacy

By Linda Ashida

Today's post is a highlight of our fourth Elk Grove Lead Learners Team (EGLLT) meeting.  Before reading on, you might be wondering, "What is a Lead Learners Team?"

Well, at Elk Grove High School, our Lead Learners Team is an interdisciplinary team of staff that comes together monthly to collaborate and learn, with our ultimate goal to improve learning for our students.  We are a team of staff that in many schools, and formerly at Elk Grove High School, would be called the "staff development team." Our EGLLT is a group of 30 staff members and it includes our principals, division chairs, counselors, and teachers from all departments; it is truly a collaborative venture.

So, why call us a "Lead Learners" team?  You may still be asking, "What are Lead Learners anyway?"

I came across a blog post recently that very aptly answers those questions: Teachers as Lead Learners by Sarah Brown Wessling. Before reading on, I encourage your to read her blog post.  It describes all of our goals of EGLLT, including this piece that especially resonated with me:

When Teachers Do the Teaching
When teachers are put in positions to lead their peers, to share their own struggles and successes, colleagues listen. When teachers can close that gap between research and reality, between the vision and how to get there, we're offering our learners a peek into the metacognition of teaching. When teachers can "think aloud," when they can make what's intrinsic, suddenly extrinsic to each other, we can shift that culture.

The post also discusses the importance of "Systems Thinking," another major goal of EGLLT.

Today's EGLLT meeting truly exemplified a team of Lead Learners: Teachers did the teaching of research-based strategies to improve learning for students, and we continued our interdisciplinary collaboration to improving our systems thinking.  The specific focus of EGLLT this year is literacy, and we are examining the research-based strategies that we can systematically implement to improve student learning.  Today's meeting focused on pre-reading strategies. Here are some highlights:

1) Divisional Technology Coaches Rachel Barry, Mark Heintz and Kim Miklusak demonstrated how they use their Learning Managment System, Schoology, to activate and build on prior knowledge. The DTCs engaged all of the EGLLT participants in their Schoology "Sandbox" so we could experience learning just as the students do in their classes.

2) Rita Sayre facilitated a lesson on Direct Instruction of Vocabulary. 

Rita's lesson was grounded in meta-analysis of research that confirms the impact of direct instruction of vocabulary on student learning and reading comprehension. After summarizing the research, Rita shared examples from her own experience, and she modeled the research-based strategies by engaging all of the EGLLT members in interactive vocabulary learning stations.

3) Our Associate Principal for Instruction, Megan Knight, facilitated a session to demonstrate how our interdisciplinary collaboration and "Systems Thinking" in EGLLT has tremendous potential to improve student learning.  She shared this TED talk by John Hattie, "Why are So Many of our schools and teachers so successful?"  His research on Visible Thinking confirms that our EGLLT is headed in the right direction. 

4) Our Summer Reading Committee met to develop actions steps toward our goal of building a community of readers around a "One Theme, One School" summer reading program that will engage our entire community of learners during the summer and throughout the 2015-16 school year.

The work of our EGLLT is challenging, and at the same time it is exciting and energizing. Our collaborative work reminds me that - whether we are administrators, teachers, counselors, or students - we are all are teachers, and we are all learners.