August 26th
1_Agenda_Gates_08262021.pdfAgenda
Materials for Our Work Together
Overview of our NSI Project
As we begin our work this year, it's important that we orient (or re-orient) ourselves to the focus of our NSI. The purposes of this first piece of our work is to understand that 1) as an NSI, our work is focused on providing equitable instructional opportunities to every student; 2) our NSI has worked across these past three school years to understand our problem of practice using data, classroom observations, and by talking to students and other teachers; and 3) the IFL team is working with role groups at all levels of DISD to ensure alignment between the NSI work and DISD initiatives.
Just & Equitable Literacy Instruction
One of the core aims of our NSI is to provide just & equitable liteteracy instruction to every student. However, we may not all share an understanding of what that means. The purpose of this work is for us to develop an understanding of what just & equitable litearcy instruciton is in our schools and across our network to use as a lens for understanding our work. We'll do this first through some individual writing and then through school team and whole network discussions.
Darlene Seeley
Darlene Seeley, CIC from WT White, speaks to the power of the NSI work.
Understanding Where Our Students Are
Understanding the context for our work is an important aspect of making sure that the instructional changes we make have a positive impact on students' achievement and provide equitable opportunities for our students to engage with relevant and cognitively demanding work. During this piece of our work, you'll have an opportunity to see some data and hear from some of our veteran NSI teachers. The purposes of this work is to develop a shared understanding of how implementation of the IFL practices impacts student achievement and to understand some of the ways the work has been adapted to meet the needs of our students.
Data only 8.26.21_SD.pdfData
Data and Task sheet_8.26.21_SD_v2.pdfTask Sheet: Studying the Data
Making Plans and Next Steps
Now that you've heard about the work and developed understanding about the project and its impact on student achievement, you'll work with your school team to make some decisions about how you'd like to begin (or continue) the NSI work. The purposes of this task are for you to develop an understanding of the tests of change and the resources available to you to help you plan. Additionally, you'll refelct on how the work that you'll do will contribute to providing just & equitable literacy instruction for every student.
Responses
Please have one member of your team capture your thinking about planning in the linked form.
Bridge to Practice
The purpose of this bridge to practice is for you to kick off the work with your school improvement team and begin your tests of change. For this bridge to practice, we’d like you to plan and enact the test of change that you agreed upon with your school team during our meeting.
To complete this bridge to practice, do the following:
Begin by working with your improvement team to select a text that you'd like to work with. If you are engaging in the quick write to narrative essay work, make a decison about your focus for writing (will you ask students to work on voice? will they work on dialogue?)
For text-based tasks, draft a high-level comprehension task in response to the text.
Next, work to draft a task sheet that explains the sequence of routines that students should engage in to be successful with the task. Consider how your instruction might look as well (will your students need a model? How might that look?).
Then, work with your school improvement team to decide how you’ll study the enactment of the task (will you look at student work? Will you use exit slips?).
Finally, use your task with students and then come back together with your improvement team to decide next steps (Adapt, Adopt, Abandon!).
Please make sure to use the resources available to you through this website and to reach out to us as you plan. You'll have an opporutnity to share your test of change work during our September 16th meeting.
Sara (smd94@pitt.edu)
Tequila (tbutler@pitt.edu)
Glenn (gnolly@sbcglobal.net)
Tony (tpetrosk@pitt.edu)