Peter Skene Ogden Secondary

2017-2018: The PLC at PSO will continue to be supported by Jessie Sviatko in the Humanities area and by Lori Meville in the Math/Science area.

Focus: Humanities Inquiry: School culture and ownership of learning
Checking: Re: self-regulation – implemented two lessons based on the Trevor Ragan’s “Train Ugly” tutorials for the grade 8s and 9s. Although all teachers during one specified block were asked to do the lesson and show the videos to their classes, few actually did. The feedback from those who did them are valuable to shaping the lessons for the grade 8’s next year.

Re: strategy frames – Kyla Marten used them as the basis for mini-lessons to fairly good success. The Learning Strategies students are not quite self-motivated enough to use them on their own yet, although with the “Train Ugly” presentations, that may change.

Re: anxiety – we are currently in the “searching” stage on this part of the inquiry. Shawn Meville, CrystalDawn Langton, and Jessie Sviatko have been interviewing the counselor and examining the strategies used at Brocklehurst Middle School in Kamloops and looking at a variety of resources to tailor a strategy to help the multitude of student struggling with this issue in our school.

Reflection: This year’s Inquiries took a while to reveal themselves in their final iteration. As a result, the “Train Ugly” based lessons were not presented to the students until June – always a problematic time of the year to throw something new at teachers and students. The upside to this process is that, when the first lesson was presented to staff, the consensus was made to show it to all junior-level students as opposed to the original plan to present only to the Learning Strategies students, so teachers obviously saw the merit and need for the message.

The work on the anxiety initiative is in its infancy. The discussion with Brock Middle School was eye-opening. Their greatest advantage is having Social Worker Students from TRU who did their practicums in the School and therefore run their program, but we were able to glean ideas that we can hopefully build on. CrystalDawn Langton is looking into funding options through the Red Cross as part of the fire recovery funding to supply a part-time counselor. We have the beginnings of a plan that we’re going to work on over the summer so that we can implement it as early as possible in the 2018-19 school year.

In conclusion, this year’s PLC Inquiry is a work in progress. Firm plans are in place for short-term and longer-term advancement of both inquiries.

Focus: Sciences Inquiry: How will using a variety of student-centered strategies for learning and assessment affect the success and resiliency of our students?
Checking: We have compared students to their own past grades and their success early in the term. We believe that we have made a positive difference in some students’ overall success. We can pin-point some individuals who have succeeded in that they have completed the course and have shown improvement in their scientific literacy over the term. Not all students showed improvement in their scientific literacy or overall progress. Students have completed surveys and reflections to describe their learning and understanding. As well we looked at their term grade compared to their grades in previous science courses. We have found the team-teaching model to be a positive one in that we have both improved our repertoires of effective formative assessment tools and teaching strategies but were both frustrated with some of the logistics. Both of us had very full and busy course loads during our team-teaching semester and found it difficult to take time away from our other classes to collaborate. We both feel that this could have been a much more beneficial experience if we had been able to have shared prep time.
Reflection: We have discovered that the composition of our class greatly affects the success of teaching strategies that usually work well with other groups of students, even with two teachers present. Having two teachers in a class of reluctant learners is effective in many practical ways, such as being able to implement IEP requirements, tracking students’ attendance and assignment completion, and providing timely feedback to students about their learning. To take this model into the future we would like to see the team-teaching model continue to be used in our school, especially in the areas of numeracy and scientific literacy, but are investigating ways to spread out the benefits, such as having the PLC coordinator team-teach with a larger number of teachers over the school year, perhaps in 2 to 3 week sessions. Our advice to teachers attempting to team-teach a course such as Earth Science 11 to improve student efficacy would be to choose a few “tried and true” student-centered teaching strategies to use regularly so that students become accustomed to and comfortable with the process. Regular reflection in a friendly format for these students would also be beneficial as a measuring tool.

2016-2017: The PLC at PSO will continue to be supported by Jessie Sviatko in the Humanities area and by Mark Doolan and Lori Meville in the Science area.

Humanities Inquiry:

How do we improve reading comprehension in our Learning Strategies students?
Analysis: The teacher introduced the goal setting and reflection to his Learning Strategies class at the beginning of Term 4. Students were asked to set a goal on Monday, do a check-in on Wednesday to monitor their progress, and complete a reflection of their progress on Friday. He had an interesting group to try this with – mostly Alternate students who were not necessarily receptive to structure and demands. Some of those students were strongly resistant to this additional requirement, but most were willing to at least try it. The teacher found that the students who were truly motivated to succeed found the goal setting and reflection opportunity helpful and worthwhile.

The teacher and I have been working on the strategies booklet for Learning Strategies students to begin using next year and it is about 2/3 complete. It will be completed before September. I have also discussed the use of it in all LS classes next year with the Learning Support Teacher as we have numerous teachers assigned to teach LS and this will provide a common basis from which to build their lessons.

Reflection: Given the teacher’s success, I will be discussing with the Learning Support Teacher next week how best to role the goal setting and reflection strategy out across all Learning Strategies class. Obviously, we need to figure out the best way to get a significant majority of students to see it as a worthwhile practice for students so they get the full benefits of the practice.

She and I will also be discussing how best to introduce the Strategies Booklet to the teachers so that they will see it as a useful tool. We used to have an amazing lesson sequence done in LS but that has fallen by the wayside in recent years as teachers have moved in and out of the department and the school. This will hopefully be the start of resurrecting that practice.

Our Strategy Discussion Meetings were more regular this year after making the decision to hold the meeting on the first Friday of each month instead of scheduling it to accommodate other school activities and pressures. We consistently had six attendees, including myself, as we shared our lesson ideas and reviewed two other “new” strategies. After doing this for nearly 10 years, there aren’t many truly “new” strategies out there, but it provides an opportunity to review one we’ve talked about in the past that may have been forgotten and may fit with what we’re currently doing in our classrooms or will be in the near future. Also, the group has changed over the years so some may not have been there for the initial introduction. With the changing staff assignments next year, I anticipate we may have new additions (but hopefully not subtractions) to the group.

Sciences Inquiry:

How will using a variety of student-centered strategies for learning and assessment affect the success and resiliency of our students?
Analysis: We found that student engagement did increase given opportunities for collaboration and when a variety of teaching strategies was used. We noted that most of our students became more confident with the course content when given chances to show their knowledge in different ways and when they had a say in the way they were being assessed.
Reflection: We found that students were more engaged, more confident and more successful when we provided them with learning opportunities that were varied, collaborative and interactive. We, as teachers, became more willing to try new ideas and were successful at moving away from a teacher-centered classroom to a more student-centered one. We also believe that we were successful in covering the content in this course with fewer and shorter lectures and a more student-centered approach.

2015-2016: The PLC at PSO will continue to be supported by Jessie Sviatko in the Humanities area and by Mark Doolan and Ray Kline in the Math area.

Humanities inquiry (Jessie Sviatko in conjunction with Noelle Lamoureux; Strategy Discussion Group)

How can we help students improve how they are learning and communicating that learning?
Analysis: Re: Goal Setting – for both Noelle and I, this evolved more into using Reflection Rubrics for different purposes during our novel studies. Noelle used the rubrics three times as part of her independent novel study discussions. I used them as part of the self-assessment prior to the students handing in their discussion summaries and question responses (11 rubrics for each – yikes!).

Re: Summarization Skills – Within the curriculum, I planned and executed several lessons through the semester that were focused on improving summarization skills as the students worked through the Social Studies 8 content.

Reflection: Re: Goal Setting - In the Exit Slip Reflection at the end of my novel study, the vast majority of the students found it a positive way to know the criteria and plan to improve for the next discussion or question. My assessment of their progress is a little more mixed – I saw a significant improvement in the quality of the discussion summaries, but less progress on the question. I wonder how many students actually took the opportunity, after doing the self-assessment reflection, to go back and add/change once they were reminded of the criteria. It would make sense to include a second round of reflection prior to handing the assignment in which basically asks “what changes did you make?” as long as it did not become cumbersome or seem unnecessary in the students’ eyes. Noelle was already doing discussion reflections prior to our Inquiry but the reflective piece this year was much more in-depth/detailed. She too observed better quality in the discussions and summaries. I will prepare a presentation for the next English Department meeting (September?) to share our practices.

Re: Summarization – before presenting to the Social Studies Department, adjustments will have to be made to not only accommodate the changes to the Social Studies 8 curriculum but to wrap the lessons into a tighter bundle – i.e. providing several repeated practices within a short time frame so that students can self-assess their progress, and therefore make meaningful changes to their practices. I saw progress in the students, but am wondering if the “unit” were more condensed, would they make better connections to the skills. We did this with the Inferring “unit” a few years ago with positive results.

Numeracy Inquiry (Mark Doolan and Ray Kline)

Can we increase student engagement and learning/success in Mathematics 9 by adjusting our teaching strategies and incorporating technology in the classroom?
Analysis: We found that both student engagement and achievement increased as a result of our efforts. This improvement was particularly evident amongst our lower-achieving / lesser-motivated students.
Reflection: As a result of our finding in this inquiry (first semester) both of us used these new strategies extensively with each of our second semester math classes. This year’s inquiry has us wanting to further develop these strategies in order to increase student “ownership” of learning.

Our plan for next year is to bring the science department into our collaborative group. Three teachers (Lori Meville, Ray Kline and Mark Doolan) have been scheduled to team-teach two classes: Math 10 and Biology 12. Our aim is to use our collaborative time to share some of the practices we have developed over the past few years in mathematics with our science department. Our longer range plan is to have the science department take over the collaborative inquiry process the following year with three teachers from that department team-teaching two science classes.

2014-2015: Jessie Sviatko has supported PLC at PSO for a number of years. Her focus is on working with the Humanities teachers this year. Mark Doolan and Ray Kline will be supporting the Math inquiry during second semester.

The Humanities inquiry this year is:

How can we improve our use of effective strategies to help our students understand and communicate their learning
Analysis:
1. I spent a fair amount of time going through the organization and availability of the strategies we’ve collected on the TCommon over the last 8 years so that they are presented in the most user-friendly way possible with the goal of making it easier, less intimidating, etc. for the teachers who have not been attending our Strategy Discussion Meetings for the last 8 years – this is doubly important because of the amalgamation of the two schools.
2. I’ve completed three PowerPoint presentations to staff with the intent of not only bringing learning challenges to the forefront of their thinking but also to provide an organized, easy-to-reference list of effective strategies/frameworks that they can use in their classrooms to help students learn more effectively. Topics covered: activating prior knowledge, main idea/summarization, and encouraging questioning.
  - With the summarization presentation, I also prepared a handout for students that will appear in next year’s planner on the basics of how to find the main idea and summarize their learning with the hopes that it will be a reference tool in many classes but a basis for our explicit social studies lesson on summarization in the future.
3. I completed a survey in May after my second presentation to see if staff found them worthwhile and the feedback was positive with only one person suggesting that PLC doesn’t belong in a staff meeting and that it should be voluntary.
  - I have not had a chance to complete a follow-up, year-end survey to find out how many people are actually using strategies from the TCommon.
4. Between the School’s timetable and my timetable, it’s been a challenge to find a time to meet for our Strategy Discussion Meetings. We’ve only met 5 times this semester.
Reflection:
1. Re: students “pushing” their word use beyond their comfort level, our English 12s were most successful which I think is a reflection of the fact that this has been promoted for many of them previously in grades 10 and 11. Next year, I will be looking for ways to promote improved vocabulary in the lower grades.
2. Re: timing of Strategy Discussion Groups, it’s going to be a matter of being pushy. “This is the day, so sorry it conflicts with…” will have to form my backbone. This year, in my opinion, the staff stress level was higher than normal and I was therefore reluctant to be pushier. It also didn’t help that, because of my full load in the first semester this year, our Strategy Discussion Group meetings didn’t start until February, in contrast to other years where we’ve met from the end of September to the middle of May.
  - Geoff Butcher has suggested that it be firmly scheduled and put on the “Friday Afternooner” which goes out to each staff member. The added bonus is that it is advertising for those who would like to attend but forget.
3. Re: Strategy Availability - For almost all of the 250+ strategies, there are now proper instructions/extension suggestions for each, a master framework that can be altered to fit the lesson and/or class, and for some, an example from someone’s classroom at PSO of how the strategy was adapted and used.
4. Re: Presentations and organized strategy guides - given the staff feedback, the presentations should continue on a bimonthly basis.
  - another survey should be done early in the year to determine the focus of the presentations and ways to help teachers use the strategies available rather than at the end of this year when people are in survival mode rather than prepping for the coming year
5. Next year, it seems prudent to approach the Social Studies department to discuss shifting the current explicit summarization lessons from Social Studies 10 (as we had been doing prior to amalgamation) to earlier – potentially Social Studies 8, but 9 might be more realistic.
  - we shifted the explicit inferring lessons from English 10 to English 9 this year with the plan to pre-load the idea in English 8 before the explicit lessons in grade 9 in the future

The Math inquiry this year is:

How will using alternate instructional methods improve student success and improve attitudes towards math?
Analysis:
1. HW checks—instant feedback, accountability. This also allowed us to check in with student learning and at the same time review last day’s lesson before beginning new content. This formative feedback helped guide the day’s lesson as common mistakes could be addressed instantly. Marks were observed to be higher than traditional homework assessments. This method more accurately assesses learning as compared to the effort-based assessment of the homework collection method. Problem areas were easier to identify and remedy. This also allowed for a recap (reinforcement) of the previous lesson(s).
2. Differentiated instruction— (grouping – as done in Guided Math at the elementary level) Students were grouped based on ability (through a variety of formative assessments) and mini-lessons were taught to address the learning needs of each group. The other groups worked on reinforcing activities such as written assignments and Khan Academy practice. Student engagement was much higher than when teaching to the “whole class.” Students were more willing to take risks in the small group setting. Students were working on small whiteboards so their progress was easily monitored. Students helping students was a common occurrence.
3. Tiered Tests—Student were given a choice of “tiered” questions for a particular learning outcome. Question point value was based on difficulty level and were encouraged to choose appropriately. Giving students a choice of questions resulted in fewer “zeroes” for short-answer or “problem” questions. (More attempts were noted.) Feedback from our students was positive; they liked having options. This encouraged students to reflect on their individual strengths and weaknesses and to make an appropriate choice for themselves. We were surprised how many students were unwilling to choose the questions with higher difficulty (and point value.)
4. Rewrite Opportunity—All students were given an opportunity to write a term exam whose mark would replace their previous tests scores if higher. This worked well for students who missed a test or did poorly on a test for any particular reason. This practice allowed for students learning at different rates. It also accommodated students who missed school or test days) during the term. Gave students a second chance to demonstrate their learning. From the teacher’s perspective it cut back on noon hours supervising test rewrites and free us up to provide student help at this time.
Reflection:
1. What have you noticed with your students as a result of your focused and explicit teaching?
2. What will you consider keeping as a part of your repertoire of strategies?
3. What would you do differently? Why?
4. Materials Wish list for next year
5. Things to do in future

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