Program Improvement 2

Chapter 5: Improving Literacy Achievement in Elementary Schools

There are 4 guiding principles elementary schools must keep in mind when they are investigating methods and infrastructures to improve literacy in their schools: 1) creating infrastructure capable of sustaining effort; 2) taking a constructivist approach; 3) following a well-defined change process; 4) building ownership.

There are 3 pillars needed for a successful high-functioning infrastructure: 1) an active, involved principals that attend PD and allow adequate collaboration; 2) a curriculum leader responsible for overseeing and managing the SBC process; 3) a vertical leadership team that monitors the staff’s pace and progress.

The Standards-Based Change (SBC) process begins with the To Do cycle which consists of 4 processes: 

1. vision statements: two are needed - one vision for graduate and one vision of an excellent reader, writer, literate thinker based on the vision for the graduate
2. end-of-year learning goals: create staircase curriculum that is built through teacher discussion and collaboration 
3. evidence systems: teachers must create tasks, texts, and scoring system to support the goals they created
4. evidence-based teaching: teachers must take the evidence from step 3 and plan out when and what will be taught and assessed.

To sustain the To Do cycle, teachers must assess and share data 3 times a year and document their curriculum, assessments, and instruction to ensure that literacy is improving and to address any changes in curriculum that need to occur.

Chapter 11: Evolution, Change, and Program Improvement

There are 10 Principles needed to engage evaluation of change.

1. Develop Relationships to Support Change: literacy specialists must establish healthy, respectful relationships with teachers and spend ample time positively interacting with them.
2. Build Capacity for Change: a bottom-up approach is more effective than a top-down approach because teachers buy-in to the program as they reflect and they’re able to set shared goals, establish a plan and work together to ensure success.
3. Survey the Reading Program: a survey is needed to establish what a program is through examination of PASS: Purpose (goals of teachers), Actions (actions developed to achieve goals), Students (what will students learn, and how will they know they learned it), and Standards (expectations are established and used to identify clear goals and set a path to reach them).
4. Analyze the Data: evaluations should show the strengths of the program and which need to be readdressed so that focus is on what should be rather than what it is.
5. Build on Strengths: evaluation results should focus on what could be done to strengthen what teachers are doing.
6. Support the Change Process: CBAM (concerns based adoption model) allows progression from concerns about self and task to the impact strategies have on students which allows for innovations to be created with mutual adaptation. Flexibility and fidelity in the literacy specialist are a must for this to happen, and the innovation process must also focus on the level of use and address the nonusers, mechanical users, routine users, and refinement users.
7. Evaluate the Innovation: literacy specialist uses interventions and observations to determine outcome and success of innovation. Specialist must actively engage with resisters to build relationships and keep open lines of communication.
8. Negotiate Bottom-up and Top-down Pressures: when external mandates are created, literacy specialists need to manage change by using data and collaboration to create a plan and implementation schedule.
9. Sustain Change: literacy specialists and teachers must continuously reflect and collaborate to ensure that growth is being made.
10. Accept the Mandate for Continuous Improvement: literacy specialist much have “evaluator’s life” by making improvement the focus of their work and ensure that innovations are occurring and academic and social needs are being met.

Reflection Questions:

1. How does the infrastructure at your school support literacy improvement efforts? What changes might be necessary to ensure sustained change?

• We are have time built into our daily schedule that easily allows for the support of literacy improvement efforts. We meet each day for an hour to discuss interventions and to study and analyze new strategies as well as existing ones. We use student data and research-based strategies to help students. I know our grade level is very open to exploring and trying new strategies, but getting buy-in and increasing the analyzation and monitoring of new strategies are always useful.

1. What steps has your school taken to ensure teacher ownership over the curriculum? How well aligned are expectations across classrooms and grade levels?

• Our school ensures teacher ownership in several ways. Teachers are able and encouraged to create innovative projects and assessments, and we celebrate each other’s successes regularly. We have been given instructional days as whole departments to plan vertically to ensure that we have divided up curriculum requirements and are being consistent with language and student expectations. During our Collaborate Time, grade levels also have discussions to ensure that we are being consistent both as a grade level and as a core team. 

1. How does your school balance institutionalizing new curriculum efforts with a continuous cycle of reflection and improvement?

• When new curriculum is introduced, we typically able to be a part of the decision-making and creation process. Our school (and district) provides us many opportunities to discuss new curriculum and plan implementation. For example, last year we were told we would be administering writing benchmarks. All middle school LA teachers met together, we divided up into grade levels, and we discussed/modified the texts and prompts that we would be using for the benchmarks. We made modifications, established norms and expectations, and agreed on the dates the tests would be administered and results be reported.

Questions:
1. What strategies does your site use to successfully create staff buy-in on new curriculum or strategies?

2. How big of a role does data play in making decisions about strategies? What types of data do you typically use?

3. Does your site have a vision statement? Did the staff create it together or was it just presented to you?

Literacy Learning in the Early Years and Adolescent Literacy

Chapter 13 talks about English Language Learners. There were several models and program options listed including Transitional Bilingual Education, Developmental Bilingual Education, Two-Way Immersion, English Language Development, Newcomer Programs, and Sheltered Instruction, but the authors stated that the SIOP (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol) was most effective. In order for students to be successful, educations with ELL students must be provided with PD focused on "second language acquisition, ESL and literacy techniques, and proven instructional models for English learners" (184). 

SIOP's components are the following: Lesson Preparation, Building Background, Comprehensible Input, Strategies, Interaction, Practice & Application, Lesson Delivery, and Review & Assessment. Each component has several parts, but the overall goal is the following: to make sure that the content is broken down into manageable chunks, that vocabulary is emphasized, that frequent interaction between student and teacher occur, that direct activities, multiple exposures, and scaffolding help the student interact with the new material, and that assessments and feedback are regular and relevant.

These PD programs can are most effective when they are presented as book studies, team planning, and peer observations and lesson study as teachers can apply the 8 components of the SIOP model and when they are paired with regular evaluation of the ELL's language acquisition.

Chapter 14 talks about RTIs (Response to Interventions). RTIs are used to create plans to help students become more successful by reducing behavior problems and increasing academic success through student-specific interventions developed by the student's teacher(s) and administrators if needed. There are 3 tiers in the RTI program. 

Tier 1 targets differentiated instruction models and grouping options to ensure that all students are receiving proper instruction in a sufficient amount of time with limited disruptions. Frequent, quick assessments are needed for Tier 1 to be able to immediately identify areas of need. 

Tier 2 focuses on more individualized instructional plans for more at risk students. These plans including tutoring in foundational skills with teachers, well-trained paraprofessionals, and experts such as special education teachers and reading specialists. These interventions should occur 3-5 times a week for 20-30 minutes at a time over the course of 8-12 weeks. Assessment of student progress should occur weekly or bi-weekly to ensure success of Tier 2 RTI. 

Tier 3 is the most specialized RTI as it targets a specific deficit rather than the 2-3 Tier 2 focuses on. These deficits are addressed by specialists, and assessments are frequent but tailored to the deficit. Tier 3 requires more collaboration between teachers, administration and experts.

PD for RTIs would most likely come from reading specialists, but math resource teachers could offer them as well. Reading specialists can work with teachers individually and as groups to evaluate data and curriculum and identify areas where Tier 1 and 2 RTIs would be beneficial and for whom more Tier 2 and 3 interventions may be needed. They can also introduce new practices as well as be the "manager and facilitator of RTI efforts within a building" (197). By taking care of materials, data, and creating RTI teams, the reading specialist can ensure that RTIs are being used effectively.

Questions: 

1. Have you used RTIs in your school/classroom? If so, what has been successful?

2. What support from the ELL department do you have in your school? What techniques do you find most successful in your classroom? What is the biggest challenge?

3. What formative assessments do you use to help evaluate student success in ELA? What specific skills do you typically target?

PD & Coaching Update

Coaching:

I completed my coaching last week, and we are meeting next Tuesday morning to do the post-observation conference. I am definitely nervous about recording myself, and I am NOT looking forward to it! It's good to be pushed past my comfort zone, though. I have a great co-teacher, so I think that'll help.

PD Program:

Thank you for the feedback on my program ideas! I expanded the descriptions more, so I hope that the plans are a little clearer now. I am sharing my ideas tomorrow with my instructional coach, and I hope that your feedback combined with hers will help me narrow down which portion would be most beneficial so that I can expand upon it and find ways to incorporate a grant proposal.

Personally, I'd really like to focus on the content-area project because it can incorporate writing and vocabulary to an extent. I think there are several things that I could write grants for if I do the content-area project as well. I think that the vocabulary mini-workshops could be incorporated easily into our schedule and could easily be implemented. I just don't know what to write a grant on if the program consists of short, content-based lessons once a month. What do you guys think? Which one would be best to focus on?

PD Program Ideas

PD Program Ideas:

Survey Results:

8/15 wanted PD focused on academic vocabulary

6/15 wanted PD focused on incorporating literacy technology

7/15 wanted PD focused on literacy & writing in the content area

7/15 wanted PD focused on cross-curricular projects

7/15 prefer whole group with small-group break-out

6/15 prefer small group unit/lesson/book study

6/15 prefer partnership, one-on-one, observation

Ideas I have:

Vocabulary-based PD in small, content-area groups that demonstrate different vocabulary techniques

*short mini-workshops that demonstrate 1-2 vocabulary strategies followed up with observations of strategies or small-group evaluations of strategies

*content-area lesson plan analysis for vocabulary techniques

*whole group workshop on technology that helps with vocabulary development with small, content area or grade-level break-outs to focus on/try out technology

Content-area writing techniques PD in small, content-area groups

*content-area workshops focusing on writing strategies for the content-area

*one-on-one lesson planning for writing strategies

*article/lesson study on different writing strategies for content areas

Vocabulary and/or writing-based cross-curricular projects PD in small, grade-level groups

*whole group explanation of projects that could be done w/ small-group break-outs to plan with grade-level teams

*small-group lesson studies for project development

Professional Development 2

I have done a couple article studies, but I like how the authors stated that they should help schools have a common language as well as common understand of key ideas and practices. After reading that, it seemed pretty obvious, but I don't think I've ever looked at it as a way to have common language. I think that article studies could be easy and effective ways to deliver PD to the faculty, and I liked the list of articles that could be used as well.

Providing PD to the faculty during a faculty meeting has to be extremely organized. From experience, I don't think it's as effective because we invariable run out of time. I do agree with the authors' statement that it is important because it shows that PD is important.

I thought Strategy 7 (Presenting Powerful Professional Development) was interesting, but I'm not sure that it really provided as much new information as I was hoping it would as we've covered a lot of it in our class discussions. It was still a good, concise reminder to clarify the purpose of the PD so that it is relevant to the participants we've developed it for. I think the section on preparation was the most helpful because a lot of the steps are small things that can be easily overlooked if you're not careful.

The lesson study was similar to what I had thought it was but a lot more in-depth. I liked that it showed the 4 steps (determine focus, collaborate, collect data, and review data) which we do without thinking most of the time. What was most interesting, though, were the 7 pathways to instructional improvement. I know that I try to look at my lessons frequently to make sure that they're effective, and I could always use another set of eyes to help me evaluate them as well. I would definitely use this strategy! I think it could be adapted in many ways too.

Questions: 
1) What faculty meeting PDs have been effective for you? What was the format?
2) Do you feel the lesson study is the coaching cycle as PD? What similarities and differences do you see?
3) Did any of these strategies make you rethink the format of your PD?

Please don't forget to create a Google Doc for your PD Program Ideas and share it with the group by Thursday so that we can all respond and annotate no later than Saturday. We should be good to submit our Plans by Sunday's due date. My gmail address is melissa.evans.9807@gmail.com. Thanks!