Zooming in on...

April 2021

Wait...There's More?

by Sarah Logan

Maybe you’ve heard the story about the kindergarten student who just couldn’t WAIT to go to school. It was the topic of conversation for days and weeks leading up to the excitement of that very first day. When asked “What are you looking forward to at school tomorrow?”, that same child incredulously responded, “I have to go BACK?!”

We can all relate to what it’s like to discover that, despite putting forth our best efforts, there is still more work to be done--there’s another paper to grade, another pile of laundry to fold, or another email to read. It’s possible that you’ve experienced this feeling when working through the PLC process. Just when you’re proud of the work your team has done to clearly articulate what students are to learn and have determined which common formative assessment to use, you’re faced with two more daunting questions: What if they don’t learn it? and What if they already know it?

Have no fear! Though at first these questions may seem as though they will require considerably more work, they simply require some key considerations in the planning process. Author Bruce Oliver’s “When Students Don’t Learn” and “When Students Already Know the Content” provide just what is needed to answer these questions. In both situations, the core focus must be matching learning approaches to the learners themselves.

When planning to meet the needs of students who need more support, Oliver encourages collaborative teams to have open and honest conversations about the challenges students face, resist the temptation to give up on students, and stay determined to find solutions. A key foundation to keep in mind is that there are multiple pathways to learning. In this helpful resource, Oliver offers practical ideas for tapping into these pathways and has grouped them by when they may be used: before assessment, after assessment, and at any time.

When planning for what to do with students who have already met the learning goal, Oliver heightens the importance of meeting their unique learning needs. Failing to do so may inadvertently stifle their future learning or prevent them from discovering how to work through challenges. Some ideas Oliver offers for these students include Independent Study (in which teacher and students agree upon outcomes, timeline, and checkpoints), Tiered Assignments (complexity levels adjusted by teacher), Technological Applications (students creatively use apps to make final products), or Theoretical Applications (inviting students to think and work in new ways).

Being ready to meet the needs of ALL learners requires team effort. Seeing each student achieve success is cause for celebration. Your collaborative efforts create the conditions in which MORE learning is possible for everyone! How might your PLC benefit from Oliver’s ideas?

For more information, visit:

Oliver, Bruce. “When Students Don’t Learn.” Just for the ASKing! May 2009. Available at www.justaskpublications.com.

Oliver, Bruce. “When Students Already Know the Content.” Just for the ASKing! November 2009. Available at www.justaskpublications.com.

March 2021

Monitoring Progress for Student Growth

by Alicia Moore

Staring at yourself on Zoom for hours is exhausting, but somehow endlessly interesting, too. Instead of seeing ourselves in a mirror once or twice throughout the day, we’ve all spent recent Wednesdays with a live-stream, constant feedback loop about our own facial expressions, hairstyles, and general appearance. While looking at yourself so frequently can be distracting, it also has its perks. With all of this Zooming, you’re a lot more likely to notice a bad hair day and make an adjustment, right?

So, what does this have to do with educating students? Well, I’d like to make the case that this phenomena is a lot like formative assessments.

Formative assessments keep the camera focused on student progress toward learning goals. Looking at real-time feedback day-in and day-out can improve not only our instruction long-term, but also our ability to make quick adjustments that get kids the learning they need right away, just like adjusting that stray hair while meeting on Zoom.

When kids show their thinking on white boards, you can clear up misconceptions that you’d never know about if you waited for them to take the unit test. When you collect exit slips and review them, your next lesson can reinforce the concepts that were a little shaky. Doing this all along the way takes the guesswork out of the big tests for students, and we can all feel more confident that we’re making progress toward the goal.

Monitoring progress on your own is certainly beneficial, but making it collaborative amplifies the potential for student growth. When you meet with your collaborative team, consider sharing results from a common formative assessment using a protocol. Here are a couple of ideas to get you started:

ATLAS, from the National School Reform Initiative, provides a structure for describing, interpreting student results and then deciding on some timely next steps.
This protocol from Solution Tree guides teacher teams to identify misconceptions and make a plan for just-in-time interventions.
For more ideas, check in with your learning specialist.

Next time you find yourself staring at your own face on Zoom, think of your students. Take a moment to consider what processes you have in place that will keep your students’ learning just as captivating as the face staring back at you from the screen.

February 2021

Monitoring Progress for Teacher Growth

by Dr. Jenny Talburt

Educators are experts at monitoring student learning, but measuring their own growth might go on the backburner due to the many other demands on their plate. As the lead learner in the classroom, teachers may consider strategies to monitor their learning as a professional in a meaningful and ongoing way, not just when growth plans are due. Teachers who are both metacognitive and reflective, hold high efficacy beliefs, and seek coaching and mentoring support will be set up well for professional growth.

Authors Barbara B. Levin and Lynne Schrum (2017) suggest that teachers be aware of their metacognition, defined as 1) being aware of what you know and what you don’t know, 2) understanding what you might need to know or learn to accomplish a task, and 3) the ability to use what you already know to accomplish a given task. Additionally, Dr. John Hattie has determined the effect size for teaching metacognitive strategies is 0.69, making it one of the most effective teaching interventions. Surely, what’s good for student learning is also good for teacher learning!

As teachers commit to monitoring their own learning, reflection is a key component of metacognition. Reflective teachers are continually looking to improve their practice. John Dewey states, “We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on the experience.” He describes reflection as a problem-solving process, beginning with a problematic situation and a feeling of uneasiness followed by a hypothesis, testing, and a potential experience of mastery, aligning to Robert Marzano’s idea that teaching is both an art and a science. Educators are consistently solving problems; it’s estimated that they make 1,500 decisions in a day! By looking at their own classrooms through the lens of action research and reflecting on outcomes, teachers can shift instruction to encourage student growth, all while developing their own expertise.

Teachers who believe that they have what it takes to impact student learning have a high sense of efficacy. They tend to see results in personal change and action, which strengthen their own commitment to teaching and learning. Garmston and Wellman (2016) offer, “Teachers with stronger personal efficacy beliefs consistently outperform teachers in the same settings with weaker beliefs. They also work harder and experience less stress.” Believing in oneself pays off - both in the learning of the teacher and the students they serve.

Finally, leaning into mentoring and coaching supports professional growth, and teachers may consider scheduling a coaching cycle with their learning specialist. Learning specialists are safe, non-evaluative, and confidential resources that are committed to helping teachers reach their own goals. They are thrilled to get the opportunity to be a sounding board during planning and another set of eyes in the classroom by collecting data that teachers select, while being a reflective thought partner for teachers. These personal cheerleaders are a resource available to all SPS teachers.

In closing, review this quote from Karen Flories: “The feedback that does the most good is that of the self - the personal evaluation of the learner - and done during the process, not at the end.” While teachers often seek feedback from principals, colleagues, and students, it is their own on-going self-reflection that makes the biggest impact. Taking time to pause and reflect on the effect of decision-making and held beliefs will serve both teachers and their students well.

Garmston, R. and Wellman, B. (2016). The adaptive school: a sourcebook for developing collaborative groups. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.

Levin & Schrum (2017). Every teacher a leader: Developing the needed dispositions, knowledge, and skills for teacher leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: Cowin.

January 2021

Summative Assessments

by Dr. Jenny Talburt

We all likely remember sitting down to take the test. This test was the one we worried about and crammed for. It was worth a zillion points and it felt as if our entire futures were riding on this exam. We’d break the seal of our blue booklet and prepare to dump all that we had memorized the night before onto those lines, hoping it would all come back to us. We’d fill in those little Scantron bubbles, and C seemed like a good guess when we just had no idea.

These make or break assessments, also known as summative assessments, drum up fear and anxiety in many that take them. Summative assessments are meant to evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit or period of time. These are often called high stakes tests, as they typically have high point values and/or departments and districts use the results to make evaluations and decisions about the amount of progress being made in a classroom, school or district.

While we know that it’s essential to use formative assessments to inform our teaching and guide our instructional decisions, there is a time and place for summative assessment. Few teachers like giving away instructional minutes to test or causing test anxiety in our students. Instead, we want our assessments to be meaningful and learning experiences themselves. Innovative Education in VT has developed a learning scale for evaluating the effectiveness of summative assessments. In addition to connecting summative assessments to learning goals, this group advocates that teachers work towards agreement of the following:

I design summative assessments that encourage learners to create evidence that demonstrates proficiency on learning goals in a variety of ways.
I design summative assessments where students have authentic and meaningful opportunities to demonstrate proficiency.
I design summative assessments that provide students the opportunity to exercise their voice and choice and remove barriers to success so that all students can succeed.
I offer students the opportunity to complete summative assessments when they have demonstrated readiness and to revise/reassess if necessary.
I co-design summative assessments with learners that encourage them to demonstrate proficiency on learning goals in a variety of ways and connects to larger themes and ideas.

As you are designing summative assessment, you might consider visiting the Innovative Education in VT blog to access their toolbox of ideas for each of these indicators.

While summative assessments are often considered “final,” teachers may use their professional judgement to use the results formatively. Perhaps you didn’t see the impact of your instruction that you expected. If that assessment evaluated a priority standard for your course, consider reteaching, spiraling back to the content throughout the rest of your course or using that feedback to revise your teaching practices in the future. After all, it’s about the learning, not the scores!

December 2020

Next Steps with your Common Formative Assessments

by Rachel Bodoin and Brandon Messner

Teachers across our district have begun the work of delivering common formative assessments. Though not an easy task, Dr. Richard Dufour would say it gives high reward. In fact, Dufour, as cited by Bailey (2019), states the “catalyst for real change - real improvement in student achievement - is writing and implementing Common Formative Assessments.” Dufour goes on to state “members of collaborative teams use the power of common formative assessments (CFAs) to ensure that each and every student attains the learning that is considered essential for their course or grade level.”

In an effort to know if students did attain the learning or if there needs to be reteaching for students to secure understanding, educators are tasked with reviewing the data in their collaborative teams. In “The Power of Common Formative Assessments,” Kim Bailey (2019) explains “teams also determine the instructional strategies that led to high levels of learning, including any significant differences in results across the team. Most importantly, members identify the students who need additional time and support, and co-plan the interventions they will provide to improve their learning.”

As your team approaches the data analysis part of the process, you might choose to use the questions below to guide your conversations around the instructional strategies used as well as what additional levels of intervention or enrichment students may require.

Discuss the results and share your high/medium/low student examples:

What intentionality to instruction might have caused student success?
How was the lesson instructed differently among us, and how might that have impacted student outcomes?
What do our students who were partially able to demonstrate the skill have in common? What kind of reteaching and additional practice do they need?
What characteristics do our high samples share?
What do the low student work samples have in common? Which skills need to be retaught?

Address what needs to be adjusted moving forward:

What might we reteach for those really struggling?
What do we do for those who’ve already mastered it?

Bailey, K. (2019, March 18). “The Power of Common Formative Assessments.” All Things Assessment, Solution Tree, Inc. Retrieved from http://allthingsassessment.info/2019/03/18/the-power-of-common-formative-assessments/.

November 2020

Unpack Your Standards

by Sarah Logan

Picture this: you’ve just moved into a new home. Boxes upon boxes of your belongings are stacked neatly in your new garage, ready to be taken to their respective rooms. Although each box is clearly numbered, you make a dreadful discovery. No one made a list of what each box contains! You have no choice but to begin the painstaking process of opening them one by one to unpack the contents so they can be put to good use.

“How could something like that happen?” you may wonder. And yet, in the world of education, it does! We can become so inundated with things like state standards, priority standards, or building expectations that we become paralyzed. We don’t know exactly what we have or what to do with what we have, thereby slowing the process of “moving” students along considerably.

Eliminating confusion is possible when we focus our attention. Author and educational consultant Mike Mattos says that we must “be insanely clear about what students are to learn.” A PLC approach provides the structure in which educators can have meaningful conversations to make sense of standards. This leads to clearly defined targets for learning, which in turn leads to positive outcomes for students.

Mastery Connect at Instructure* offers these steps for teachers interested in “unpacking” standards:

Step One: Identify Key Concepts and Skills: Think in terms of what knowledge and abilities you’re wanting students to develop. Often the nouns in a standard identify the content, while the verbs indicate the skills.

Step Two: Identify Learning Target Types: Consider what success indicators you’ll look for--content knowledge, cognitive reasoning, performance, or product.

Step Three: Determine Big Ideas: What are the conceptual understandings students will gain along the way?

Step Four: Write Essential Questions: Craft open-ended questions that will pique student interest and help them make meaningful connections.

As you consider the needs of your students, how might this approach guide your next PLC meeting?

*Source: https://blog.masteryconnect.com/four-steps-unpacking-standards/

October 2020

Collaborative Culture

by Dr. Christen Glenn and Dr. Jenny Talburt

We can likely identify a time when we were part of a group project or staff meeting that felt unproductive. It may seem that the same people do all the talking, while others never get a word in. People may be disengaged, and it feels like a waste of time. Research holds that developing a collaborative school culture and collective efficacy transforms student growth, but where do we begin?

Understanding and utilizing the Seven Norms of Collaboration is a great starting point to creating a collaborative culture within your team or building. When the norms of collaboration are in place all voices are heard and respected, which creates psychological safety for all group members. Zimmerman, Roussin & Garmston (2020) state, “Teams that feel safe are more likely to take risks, admit mistakes, collaborate, and even take on new roles” (p. 42). Knowing the power of collaboration that takes place when teams feel safe, which of the norms might you focus your attention on to become a more skillful team member?

Effective groups are also clear about whether they are participating in dialogue or discussion. Dialogue is seeking to understand, while the purpose of discussion is to make a decision. “By persisting and spending time in dialogue in order to understand, team members find that they can often learn more from their differences than their similarities” (Zimmerman, et al., 2020, p. 19). When teams know the purpose of their time together, they are more likely to put ideas on the table, use their time wisely, and understand the process of decision-making.

Another way that teams work together collaboratively is through the use of structures. Teams that use structures work more productively and use time more efficiently than others. Protocols build capacity by structuring group interactions, and, over time, those patterns of behaviors become accepted group norms. It’s ideal for all to develop the skills of collaboration to increase self-directedness, group confidence and collective efficacy (Lipton & Wellman, 2011). To access protocols that you might incorporate in your PLC teams and classrooms, visit Thinking Collaborative and the School Reform Initiative websites.

While we want to be a part of productive teams as adults, we also want to be good collaborators. Take time to reflect on the following questions, and consider how you might support collaboration within your teams.

Which of the norms might you need to practice within your collaborative teams?
How could specificity around whether we are engaging in dialogue or discussion support teacher agency?
How might the use of structures build teacher efficacy?
Knowing that collaboration is more important now than ever before, what strategies, skills, and dispositions will you hold on to and take back to your team to support a collaborative culture?

With this in mind, we hope you’ll consider how these ideas might create a collaborative culture in your building and teams.

Lipton & Wellman (2011). Groups at work. Burlington, VT: MiraVia.

Zimmerman, Roussin & Garmston (2020). Transforming teamwork. Thousand Oaks, CA:

Corwin.

September 2020

Laying the Foundation of PLCs

by Alicia Moore

School looks different this year, and being an educator feels especially tough. What has stayed the same, though, is our purpose: to make sure that all students learn. This mission is what motivates each one of us show up every day, regardless of the rocky terrain of 2020.

To accomplish our goal, we need each other. That is what professional learning communities are all about. Even in years that have seemed easy by comparison, our students benefit from the collective wisdom that comes from collaborating with colleagues; this year, our collaboration is a lifeline for both us and our students. How do we lean into our learning communities to stay the course?

Any learning community is only as strong as its foundation. With a strong foundation, professional learning communities drive the work that matters most to each of us. As we settle into the school year, consider spending some time with your team connecting to the big picture. Answering the following questions together can lay the groundwork for healthy, productive collaboration, regardless of what this year throws at us.

How might we ensure that our work places our students’ needs at the forefront?
How might our team’s work connect to the school’s larger mission and vision?
What commitments might we need to make to one another to ensure productive collaboration?
What are the guiding principles that drive the work of our collaborative team?
What role can we play in reaching the goals listed in our School Action Plan?

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