The Power of Reflection

At Parkway last month, we had the awesome opportunity to spend a day and a half with Bill Parrett and Kathleen Budge.  I highly recommend reading their latest book,  Disrupting Poverty; 5 Powerful Classroom Practices. During their visit we were able to conduct a learning walk and debrief with the leadership team. During the debrief, Kathleen asked several questions about how we teach writing at Parkway. Afterwards our leadership team had an in depth discussion about that very topic, particularly writing in the upper grades. We were all left with a question. Are we doing enough quality writing at Parkway?  I have reflected on this discussion for two weeks. When my  April Educational Leadership magazine arrived in my box and the content was totally dedicated to teaching writing, I knew then that my reflection was well timed and I needed to write about it.

 I came to the conclusion that we are missing opportunities for writing in the upper grades at Parkway. My reflection fell into two areas.  First, why? And then, what do we need to do about it?

 This discussion connects to the one-to-one Chromebook initiative at Parkway. This has been a game changer for the students and staff. Our Achieve 3000 numbers are up.  Our TenMarks data is looking promising. Even our quarterly assessments are trending up in comparisons to the last two years. During the quarterly data meetings, the teachers attribute some of this progress to students having their own individual device. They do not have to wait for a laptop to complete their Achieve article, theirs is waiting for them when they are ready. Teachers are finding it easier to differentiate and students are taking ownership of their own learning. Just so we are clear, I am a huge fan of the one-to-one device initiative.  But, has this initiative impacted student writing at Parkway?

 It is no secret that Parkway works hard to be accredited every year. I sweat the scores in ways I never had to at Princess Anne or Linkhorn.  There are times during the year when we focus on what we are going to be tested on and need for accreditation.  As much as I celebrated the demise of the 5th grade SOL writing assessment, I wonder what the impact was on teaching writing in elementary school?  Parkway upper grade teachers, like in many other schools, worry about time to cover the curriculum, time to drill down to individual students needs, and time for test taking skills.

 The process of  teaching writing is a slow time consuming process. The Writers’ Workshop model is an example of a highly effective, yet time consuming strategy.  Our leadership at Parkway determined that we needed to spend time during our weekly collaboration and purposely embed additional opportunities for writing.  We need to remind teachers to provide students with a balance of opportunities during rotations. Chromebooks, Achieve and TenMarks are all excellent station rotations. However, it is important to provide writing opportunities that take our students through the writing process as well.  We need to remind ourselves and our teachers that spending quality time working with students and their writing, will show dividends in their reading scores as well.