Active Exploration December 5, 2012

Today in our PLC we reflected on our work this week around the celebration of Hanukkah. We talked about how students connected the new information to their own experiences with celebrations, how they began to understand new vocabulary like "tradition" and "symbol", and areas we would like to further explore in the weeks to come. In the following weeks we will be researching other winter celebrations such as Kwanzaa, Chinese/Vietnamese New Year, Eid, and Christmas; so spending this time looking back on our first go at the research process with this group of kids was very valuable. As we learn more about each of these holidays we would like to have students start to compare the similarities and differences among them. We have introduced the Venn diagram as a means of sorting information and ideally would like students to use this as a method of comparison in the coming weeks.

Teachers are Designers of Learners

Describe the Learning Outcomes of the Task: 

Diana: 

ELL Students conversation skills. Students should be able to answer questions about food/restaurants.  She’s been working with 2 students in small groups. There has been lots of improvement with one child (because of social behaviour?) and a small amount with the other (shy and reserved). 

Feeback: Looking to improve engagement and to increase how much each student is speaking in full sentences during instructional time. 

What other teachers see: 

Good real-life task. Not silly. Practical (helpful in real life). Working for 1 kid, but not the other... Maybe too long. 

What does this tell us: 

-Need to make it more exciting or challenging. 

-that we need to find a topic that is more interesting to the boys...(soccer, etc.). 

-need to focus on engagement...

What will we do to enhance the student learning: 

-make extrinsic rewards (board game for competition) for class time. 

-move the unit forward faster (students will take cameras home tomorrow). 

-Students will take pictures of their food (mandatory)

-Students will take pictures of things they like to do (optional)

Big Ideas: 

-we need to get the boys talking as much as we can with more engagement. 

-risk taking... How can we get 1 boy to take risks...

Adjust the Task: 

-move things forward. Make them happen quicker. Increase engagement through cameras and personal stories. 

Claire: 

As Claire is new to the class, she’s going to take more time to learn capabilities of students and to familiarize herself with the needs. 

She would like to focus on Language Arts and Math. D is a student in the class who struggles with academic engagement and social interaction. He is getting better (he is trying), but has a long way to go. 

Focus: Trying to get D to work 10 minutes on and 10 minutes off. 

Strategy: Highlighting words and he traces over them. 

Strategy: Helping him memorize a simple story, and having him read it to Sandi (another teacher in the school that he adores). 

Action Plan: 

Claire will bring in some of D’s written work for discussion. 

Mike: 

Learning Outcomes: Getting students familiar with vowels and memorizing sight words. 

SWBAT: Recognize vowels and connect them with the correct sound. 

SWBAT: Immediately recognize the sight (“Cheat”) words. 

Feedback On: Helping students read left to right (students appear to be struggle with reading right to left). Getting strategies to help students with dyslexia (haven’t formally been assessed as dyslexic, but strategies may help). 

What do you see: 

-lessons are engaging and fun. 

-enjoyable lessons/ students don’t feel forced. 

-students are learning. 

-students are motivated

-gaining social skills. 

What does it tell us: 

-kids need to work on reading left to right. 

-learning vowel sounds (recognition). 

-reinforcement on outcomes. 

-I need to learn more about dyslexia. 

What will we do to enhance student learning: 

-I’ll do some pyscho-motor tests

Big ideas: 

-students learn at different paces and in different ways. 

Action Plan: 

Diana: Will bring in sound recording of conversation which we listen to, to think about next steps. 

Claire: Will bring examples of D’s work to look at his printing and to come up with strategies. 

Mike: Will bring in a video recording of boys reading words to see what they are actually doing. 

Board Game PDF

Deal or No Deal Dec. 5

PLC December 5, 2012

Terra, Megan, Jen, Lisa T.

-       Terra showed us Deal or No Deal center from a high, medium, low student

Learning Outcomes

-       Terra explained that the outcome of this center was that students would be able to estimate and add using decimals to the hundredths place.

-       She showed us how they started estimating first with flyers and then moved on to adding with decimals.

-       She asked the group how she could take this center and push it forward

Feedback

-       Differentiated instruction

-       Authentic - using real life situations (i.e. food flyers)

-       Modeled examples  (posters, journaling)

-       Different expectations for each learner (lower- just single digit estimating, higher- estimating and calculating with decimals

Next step

-       Students have a budget of $300 to spend on holiday wish lists

-       Use various flyers to do this

*Some students may get disappointed looking at all the toys and wishing they had them so we thought we could frame the question as making a wish list for gifts or food for Miriam our sponsor child or another child in need.

Assessment

PLC NOTES: November 21, 2012

PLC Name: Assessment Group

PLC Members: Kathy, Lisa, Emily

PLC Focus and Essential Question:

How can we develop assessment practices that best improve and support student learning and guide teaching?

Our focus is on involving students in the assessment process, and we plan to focus on these sub questions:

1.   How do we support students to be honest with marking?

2.   How do we support/be good with peer edits?

3.   How do students improve their work based on their own feedback?

4.   When does a “standard” rubric need to be created/provided?

5.   How can we provide/use guiding questions to help them make progress? (Interview questions/one-on-one)

Challenges: non-readers

Goals & Strategic Plan

We want to find answers to our guiding questions by looking at student work, and assessments we currently use, and improving them.

Our first project is to develop a more meaningful Structure and Style Assessment that parallels the report card.

Goal & Descriptor of Success

What do we need to learn, know, explore, discuss, find, access and be able to do in order to achieve our goal(s)?

We need to look at student work, and examine our current assessment procedures.  We need to consider what has been successful as well as ways to improve based on our guiding questions.  Our goal is to improve learning.

How and where will we get the knowledge, skills or understandings?

·      From each other and through collaboration by sharing our current assessments and looking at student work.

·      Discussing pros and cons

·      Getting student input/feedback

·      Getting feedback from each other

·      Practice/Implementation (applying it into our class)

·      Personalization for assessment

What resources and supports will we need in order to achieve our goals?

·      Student work samples

·      Past rubrics/forms of assessment

·      Refocus

·      Galilleo

What data will help us understand how this work has improved student learning and achievement?

·      Student progress

·      Observations of students making meaningful self-assessments (accurate)

·      Students taking feedback/using checklists, etc. to improve their work

Action Plan

PLC Actions

1.   Address the questions by the end of the year

2.   Tackle Project one: develop meaningful Structure and Styles Assessment

a.   Develop new student-created rubric based on their suggestions and feedback related to report card scale (1-5). Each of us will develop one with our student groups. We will meet before next PLC to compare each other’s rubrics.

Active Exploration Group 2

PLC Name: Active Exploration

PLC Members: Megan, Jen, Terra, Lisa T.

PLC Focus and Essential Question:  

How can we challenge the individual learners in the classroom? 

Goals & Strategic Plan

Goal & Descriptor of Success

After an in depth discussion, we decided that our main goals will be:

-building confidence and independence in students through active exploration

-creating activities that are manageable and authentic

-making sure students are actively exploring the skills, knowledge and understanding we, as teachers, want them to learn

-making sure the individual learning levels are being addressed in all activities

We want to work towards these goals with a focus on math.

Our resources will include:

-the Galileo rubric

-Books:

            - “Hands on Math” Grades 2-3 Creative Teaching Press

-“Teaching Student Centered Mathematics” Van de Walle

-“Multiple Intelligences in the Mathematics Classroom” by: Hope Martin

-“Children are Mathematical Problem Solvers” National Council of Teachers of    

                 Mathematics

  -“Number Sense” Grades 4 -6 Dale Seymour Publications

  -“About Teaching Mathematics” K – 8 by: Marilyn Burns

-Math storage room

-Mike

-Each other

-Pinterest

We will use observations, student discussions, and the Teacher/Student Effectiveness Rubric to help us understand how this work has improved student learning and achievement.

Action Plan

Each member will bring sample student work from a math activity to our next PLC meeting. 

We will discuss the student successes, what did not work and what the teacher learned from the activity.

Through further discussion, we will work as a team to share thoughts, suggestions and new ideas about the activity and how we can move the student forward with his/her learning.

Authenticity

PLC Name: Authenticity

PLC Members: Sandi, Sonya, Lien, Jessica

PLC Focus and Essential Question:  How do we provide authentic learning experiences and projects?

Goals & Strategic Plan

Goal & Descriptor of Success

We need to define authentic. Then explore how we create this experience with the students and assess through student work, discussions and observations that authenticity is taking place.

Through sharing and exploring student work together we will gain this knowledge, skills and understanding.

Resources through discussions with colleagues, Galileo Network website and print resources, discussions with students

The What did you do today in school rubric will guide our understanding of how our work is improving student learning and achievement.

Action Plan

PLC Actions (include whom and by when?)

Month 1: Through genuine experience define our own personal version of authenticity. Each member will bring samples of student work to the next meeting.

Through sharing and exploring student work together we will gain and understanding of how our actions are impacting student learning and achievement.

Active Exploration

PLC Name:

Active Exploration

PLC Members:

Heather and Vanessa

PLC Focus and Essential Question:  

Active Exploration Opportunities in Kindergarten Learning Environments:

“Does having a student’s artwork displayed publicly to a viewing audience affect their ability to sequentially retell the steps, using important details, that they took to create the piece and their reasoning behind artistic choices (including research or personal experiences)?”

Goals & Strategic Plan

Goal

Our fundamental goal for the purpose of this PLC is to improve literacy skills (oral, print, and visual) for all of our students, with a focus especially on students with limited pre-school experiences, ELL learners, special needs students etc.  By giving students a chance to explore their world through new experiences and materials, and engaging all students in personalized learning experiences, we know that we can increase vocabulary by sparking quality conversation through questioning and inquiry-based work.  Dickinson and Smith (1994) found that the quality of teacher-child conversations when children were 4 years old was related to their end-of-kindergarten receptive vocabulary levels (Neuman and Dickinson, eds., 2001, 269).  Our goal throughout the course of this project would be to create an environment that sparks and supports quality conversations and experiences.  We aim to have meaningful documented conversations as per Reggio Emilia and to connect that work to Miriam Teheran’s (and many others) philosophy that developing oral language is the foundation of all literacy learning.  Miriam Trehearne stated in her lecture, Improving Oral Language and Comprehension K-3, at the Calgary City Teachers’ Convention 2012 that “children from low SES backgrounds know 6000 fewer words upon starting school” when compared with their more affluent counterparts - and we will strive to close that gap however we can.

Creating a Space that Inspires Students to Talk

Forest Heights’ low socio-economic demographic affects our students, as well as our ability as a school to pursue projects and experiences that cost any substantial amount of money through parent fundraising efforts, school fees, etc.  It is for this reason that grant applications such as this one, and others in the school to support literacy, technology, and off-site experiences for classes, go a long way to supporting our students.

Oral language development is the foundation for all literacy learning, and talking is the single best way to develop oral language capacity (Trehearne, 2012). With this in mind we have designed a classroom research project that aims to enhance oral language development while integrating concepts from the Reggio Emilia approach and play-based approaches to learning. In short, we want to create a space that inspires our students to talk.

This year, we have structured our kindergarten program into a true team teaching environment where two teachers share all 45 students, including a variety of complex needs, in a full-day program. We operate out of two classrooms (Room 11 and Room 12) with an adjoining door in between. Room 11 is where we meet as a large group to do things like read-alouds and journal writing. During centre time we are able to really spread out into both of the classrooms to do independent choice activities like building, arts and crafts, dramatic play, light table, reading, and play dough. This system has worked very well for our students thus far, and as professionals we are looking to pursue ways in which we can further support oral language development in the future.

Our plan is to reinvent the space in Room 12 into a space that encompasses the comforts of home and that gives our students the inspiration and ability to start interesting conversations with their peers, teachers, and families. We have taken inspiration from one of the main tenets of the Reggio Emilia approach, which is to create an environment that acts as a ‘third teacher’. To us, this means that the environment is safe, organized, interesting, comfortable, imaginative, and inspiring (all of the things that we teachers aspire to be!). All too often when children engage in a conversation they rely on adults to steer the conversation, provide the inspiration, and decide the topic. If the environment is truly operating as another teacher it should be able to provide all of these things, so that children are supported in talking about interesting and personally relevant topics at all times of the day. In our book study of “Bringing Reggio Emilia Home”, the author, Louise Boyd Cadwell, emphasizes the important role that environment plays when she says, “...the environment is the best educator when it promotes complex, varied, sustained, and changing relationships between people, the world of experience, ideas, and the many ways of expressing ideas” (1997).

The Reggio Emilia approach lends itself well to our focus on oral language development because of the emphasis it puts on developing the voice and the point-of-view of the child. It is for this reason that we wish to bring in more aspects of the Reggio-approach while developing several distinct areas in our classroom where students can work and talk together, while playing and learning at their own level. The specific areas that we would like to create in our classroom are: the living room, the dining room, the art studio, the creative playroom, the exploration area, and the book nook. We believe that by carefully designing each of these spaces we can create a classroom culture of exploration, imagination, and engagement that will improve the oral language development of our students. A physical description of each of the spaces will be provided as well as justification for how each space will develop oral language capacity and its ties to Reggio Emilia.

Resources

At the school level, our work this year will been supported by our PLC work in a small group with a total of two colleagues, with administrative support, focusing on Reggio Emilia and meaningful, personalized learning.  As well as bi-weekly meeting times to further this work as provided by our administration, we have been encouraged to take release time to visit other schools to see what they have done with their Reggio work. As part of our PLC work last year, we visited Capitol Hill School and were inspired by their school-wide initiatives based on creativity, inquiry, and personal learning.  Both teachers have included related goals in their Professional Growth Plans from last year and this year to continue our passionate work in this area.

Lastly, while our school funds are limited, we propose to use some of our classroom budget (as allocated by the school and Keeler Parent Council) to help support our project goals.  We are hoping to secure some additional funding from our ECE grant proposal.

We have already subscribed to the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), which will hopefully spark some questions and ongoing conversations about our students’ work and next steps we can take to support them.

Data

In the course of a month, we would select 10 students to have their artwork displayed and presented to a viewing audience.  5 students would participate in a 3-week cycle of a conversation group with an adult regarding their creation.  The other 3 students would not be forewarned of their presentation to an unfamiliar audience, nor would they participate in the conversation group with a teacher during that cycle.  Rather, they would have their work selected later in the cycle to be presented.  In this way, 5 students would have the opportunity and practise to converse with others about their work, while the other 5 would not have that opportunity.  The following month, their roles would be reversed so that all students would still have the same opportunities throughout the school year (as is our professional obligation).  

Each of the 6 students would then have opportunities to discuss their artwork with their ‘audience’ (adults in the school, other grade students) during a ‘gallery show’.  Teachers will use a series of questions that they may ask each of the 6 students during the final ‘artist statement’ scribing session in week 4 of the cycle.  The prompts and questions asked will be:

• Tell me about it.
• Tell me about how you made it.
• Tell me where you got your ideas from.
• Tell me about the materials you used.
• Did you have any problems making this?
• How did you solve them?
• What do you like best about your artwork?

After each student's work has been scribed, the teachers will look at the volume of communication (word count), the use of sequential vocabulary (first, next, last, etc), and the use of descriptive words (smooth, bumpy, difficult, slippery, etc).  

Using this data, we will be able to compare students who don’t have the opportunity to commune with others about their work over a period of time, versus those that do.  We may also draw some conclusions in comparing a student’s ‘artist statements’ over a period of months, both having had the conversation group experiences and not.


Action Plan

PLC Actions (include whom and by when?)

What specific tasks do we need to accomplish by the end of the school year? Complete tasks outlined in our ECEC proposal, write an article for ECEC newsletter, move forward with reinventing spaces in our classroom, look at student data, anecdotal evidence, and recorded conversations.

What are our main tasks for the first month? Decide with group members how we will make student work the focus of our PLC work (i.e. how work will be shared, valued, built upon), clarify process with ECEC committee and try to get support monies in place in order to move forward (we have been trying for several months to clarify the process, find out how to acquire money to buy materials, etc.). If money come though we will move forward with selecting and purchasing materials.

What kind of timeline do we propose for the remainder of the tasks? Realistically speaking, by the time that the money is accessible to us and we have collected the necessary materials, the research component of our project will probably not start until after Winter Break. We will run the proposed research groups from apx. Jan-Apr and then start the writing of article for the ECEC newsletter (a requirement of the grant).

What data/work can we use/generate to monitor the impact of our actions on student learning and achievement?
We will utilize the data obtained through the Early Years Evaluation Teacher Assessment (EYE-TA) collected from this year and last year (2011-2012, 2012-2013). What we hope to see is that students who score low (indicated by a red or yellow flag) on the language section of the assessment at the beginning of the year will score “at grade level” by the end of the year (indicated by a green flag). Anecdotal data will also be collected through the use of video recording, teacher written reflection, and student reflection (scribed with adults) in order to document the language acquisition, learning, and skill development of this high needs population of students. We will compare the data from year to year in order to measure whether the changes we have made to support oral language development have indeed made a difference in students’ ability to express themselves orally.

Strong Relationships

PLC Name: Active Principle 4: Strong Relationships

PLC Members: Brandy, Shannon, Harjyote

PLC Focus and Essential Question:

1.  How are we effectively fostering a positive relationship between students and their learning?

Goals & Strategic Plan

Goal & Descriptor of Success

Goal

1. Students will have Passion, Excitement, Understanding, and Ownership of their work.

         Passion, Excitement, Understanding and Ownership are demonstrated by:

o   Taking their work home with them and working on it there

o   Talking to their families and peers about what they are doing. 

o   Usining unstructured time (IE recess, lunch and Fun Friday time) to work on their projects, and not just to avoid going outside.

o   Sharing their learning and final projects with peers, teachers and guests.

o   Displaying their learning for others to see.

What do we need to learn, know, explore, discuss, find, access and be able to do in order to achieve our goal(s)?

·      We need to take into account how the students feel about their learning right now. 

·      What they are interested in, and looking at how we can relate that to the curriculum.

·      Discuss with them the appropriate ways in which they can express and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding.

o   Diaramas, plays, posters, paragraph, computer models, artwork etc.

Discussions need to had around how to assess their work.

         Creating student rubrics for self assessment.

How and where will we get the knowledge, skills or understandings?

Galileo:

§  looking at how to teach for deeper understanding.

§  Teaching and modeling how to collaborate ideas amongst students and their peers.

What resources and supports will we need in order to achieve our goals?

o   Ipod will be handy for documenting student thinking.

o   Colleagues and feedback

o   A data bank of websites and student based tools like Learn Alberta and the new CORE

What data will help us understand how this work has improved student learning and achievement?

·      Student work, and engagment.

·      Making videos of them explaining their process and final projects.

·      Students ability to talk about what they have learned.

Action Plan

·      To start we would like to interview our classes to see where they are at and how they feel about what they are learning, and how they are learning.

o   This may need to be a scaffolded conversation as many learners may not have the necessary vocabulary to express their feelings on their learning. 

·      We will each bring in documents from these conversations.

PLC Actions (include whom and by when?)

What specific tasks do we need to accomplish by the end of the school year?

What are our main tasks for the first month?

What kind of timeline do we propose for the remainder of the tasks?

What data/work can we use/generate to monitor the impact of our actions on student learning and achievement?

Designers of Learning

PLC Name: Language Learners

PLC Members: 

Diana, Mike

PLC Focus and Essential Question:  

Principle 1: Teachers are Designers of Learning

Problem: We are working with English Language Learners as well as students that are significantly below grade level in reading and writing (4 grades below). 

Question: How do infuse an inquiry-based model and still “Focus on the Hard Parts” to maximize student achievement? 

Goals & Strategic Plan

Overarching Long Term Goal

To achieve level four on the Effective Teacher Practices Rubric under the category “Teachers Are Designers of Learning”.

Goal & Descriptor of Success

Long Term Goal Diana: To have students create a conversational board game to help the next generation of English Language Learners within our school community. Students will also create a restaurant scenario where they will listen and respond verbally to orders.

Short Term Goal Diana: To create opportunities for T and R to experiment with conversational English. 

Professional Development:

-Review and understand the Listening and Speaking Proficiency benchmarks. 

-discuss how to break the project into smaller pieces (making it manageable). 

-found: menus, made cards, etc. 

Sources for PD:

-We will get information from the ESL Proficiency Benchmark tracking sheets.

-Refer to the Effective Teaching Practices Rubric. 

Support Needed:

-Consultation with teachers around time, lending students for the role-playing day, etc. 

-Consider optimal environments

-Ask teachers to observe if their conversation in class is increasing. 

Data Collection:

-Voice recordings and video recordings will be needed to gauge progress and to decide next steps. 

-Anecdotal notes about the amount of conversation taking place (need to maximize speaking). 

-Notes from teachers about conversation in class. 

Action Plan

PLC Actions (include whom and by when?)

Initial Tasks: 

-develop a sample game for students to use as conversational starters. 

-find appropriate menus

-chat with teachers about students’ conversational levels during class time. 

-create a tracking sheet (super easy-peasy). 

-use conversation starters with students and bring feedback. 

-get feedback from students about game modifications (game board? What would it look like?). 

Timeline:

- 2-4 lessons using the pre-created conversation starters. Bring back to PLC, made modifications. 

• 4-6 lessons students bring cameras home and photograph their food (for a week or so). 
• Students go through samples of menus. 
• Students write descriptors for their menu. 
• 6-8 Students create a menu. 
• 8-10 Students practice being waiters in their restaurant. 
• 11-12 Students bring in friends at recess and serve them. 
• 12-14 Develop a conversational board game of some kind.