Teach Children Well: Self Reflection Journey

Showing posts with label Self Reflection Journey. Show all posts

Saturday, July 13, 2013

Collegial Collaboration: Details

One of my greatest challenges during the school year is coordinating efforts effectively with the multiple educators I work with.

The new Massachusetts' Teacher Evaluation Rubric stresses the importance of sharing data with collaborating educators, students, and families in an effort to teach children well. Hence, it's time to establish a collegial collaboration communication system with focus and strength.

The challenge, as I outlined in this post, is time and numbers. Since I'm mainly on task with students during the school day, there is not much time to talk and plan with collaborators, and since there are many collaborating teachers, the number of people to collaborate with further complicates this goal.

Hence in an effort to coordinate our efforts to best meet the needs of each student, I plan to do the following:

1. Meet with each collaborating teacher prior to, or at the start of, the school year. Use a chart to identify with each teacher the following information:

Which students in my class are you working with?
Specifically when are you working with them?
What are my responsibilities with regard to annual review meetings and family meetings, and when will those meetings occur?
What are your specific targets with regard to the children you work with?
What is your preferred way to communicate on a regular basis i.e. meetings, email, phone calls, etc?
What communication pattern will serve our work well?

2. Establish a regular system for reporting student goals, achievements, questions, and teaching success so that the whole team will profit from each teacher's efforts, knowledge, and success.

Create a student coaching spreadsheet for each child.
All collaborating teachers contribute to the coaching spreadsheet regularly to identify goals, successful strategies, needs, and successes.
Coaching notes are written with the knowledge that students, families, and leader/evaluators will also be able to access the documents and notes.
Use coaching documents as a resource for family, student, and evaluation meetings.

Example of a Class Spreadsheet Without Titles/Names

3. Establish a data spreadsheet for the entire class. This spreadsheet will include the link to each child's individual coaching document, students' assessment scores, and codes related to student needs, accomplishments. Use this chart in the following ways:

Analyze instructional efforts.
Determine individual, small group, and class goals.
Make curricula decisions.

Establishing a three-part communication system like this prior to, or at the start of, the school year means that you won't be scrambling for information when it's time to make decisions, conference with students and families, collaborate with colleagues, or share information with evaluators and leaders.

In Massachusetts, the New Educator Evaluation System, clearly points to this activity as one way to teach children well. Hence, creating these systems now will set the stage, in part, for a successful school year ahead.

11/14 Note
After trying this system for a year, the individual student sheets were not as efficient as class tracking sheets given our current time and structure, thus for this year I ended up with a class website that includes all the class's important data. I share this website with all collaborating teachers.

Friday, July 12, 2013

Collaborative Unit Design: Process

If you want to build community and collaborate with strength, then plan to revise or design a student learning unit with students, educators, and/or community members.

Working together to design with a common purpose demands the best of us, and brings us forward with collective skill, creativity, and learning.

Yet, often when a group gets together to plan, they don't have a research-based, efficient road map to follow.

Hence, I offer you the unit design template below. This template is based on my learning design research over the past few years and the expectations of the new Massachusetts Educator Evaluation Rubric.

You are welcome to use this template to guide your independent or collaborative unit design processes. If you have ideas for enrichment or revision please let me know. Also please contact me with any questions you may have.

Interdisciplinary Unit Planning Template

Use this step-by-step planning template when planning a unit of study collaboratively or on your own to effectively teach children and to also meet the MA Evaluation Standards. You can skip around as you create, it's not necessary to complete the chart step by step.

You can easily make a copy of this document on a Google doc and share the document with all collaborators so all can add/revise information as identified and developed. Decide on a collaborative process for revision so that individual’s work is protected. Note that it is easy to add or delete table rows if needed.

1. Determine Unit Rationale, Standards, and Title:

Pose the title as a question:

2. Keep a list of materials and resources that will be added to the unit website after the initial planning stage.

Teacher Resources Books, Links, Workshops. . .
Student Resources: Books, Websites, links, games. . .
Materials: (including technology)
Resource Sites: Museums, Nature Preserves, Zoos. . .
Activities:

3. Use common core, state, and local documents to Identify the standards that you want to embed in the unit design:

Subject	Standards
ELA
Math
Tech
Social Studies
Science
Other

4. Discuss and chart how this unit will appeal to students’ interests, passions, and developmental level.

5. Learning today points to a need for skills thought of as 21st century skills or life long learning skills. These skills prepare students well for the world they will be live in. Discuss ways that the unit will develop these skills in student learners.

Skill	Ways this skill will be incorporated into the unit.
Communication
Collaboration
Creativity
Critical Thinking Skills

Also include Citizenship and Character in the C's Chart.

6. Students respond to learning that is meaningful and relevant, learning that they can connect and develop with engagement. Also, substantial learning exists when students synthesize and apply their learning as well as teach others. Discuss ways that this unit will have meaning, relevance, engagement, enrichment, connectivity, synthesis, application, and opportunities to present to, teach, and coach others.

Unit Attribute	Ways that the attribute is exemplified in this unit.
Relevance
Meaning
Engagement
Enrichment
Connectivity
Synthesis
Application
Presentation, Teaching and Coaching

7. What skills, concept, and knowledge do you hope students will learn as they engage in this unit. Define the “success criteria” related to this unit. Since most units are presented to a diverse group of learners, educators may want to design the success criteria that responds to three levels including review (meets standards prior to grade level and lays a foundation for grade-level learning), grade-level, and enrichment.

Level	Success Criteria
Review
Grade-Level
Enrichment

8. How will you know what students know before starting this unit study? How will you incorporate this information into the unit design and execution.

Unit Pre-Assessment Design, Analysis, and Use.

9. Design the overall roll-out of the unit in general with a step-by-step unit map.

(Leave space in the unit design for student choice and voice whenever possible)

Unit Step Description (listed in order)	Approximate Dates

10. Create a Unit Website that includes the following:

I like to use Google Sites, but there are multiple website tools available. Here’s an example of a unit website.

Unit Title
Unit Rationale: (research, student interest/passion, developmental appropriateness)
Unit Standards
Success Criteria
Plan (the schedule of learning experiences and expectations)
Resources
Enrichment (Extras)

11. Design unit specifically using this lesson design template for each lesson or group of lessons, activities, and events. Add specific lesson information to website as desired.

Consider students’ ages, unit depth and breadth and desired effect when making the decisions about what specific lesson information and links to add the website.
What website information will support students’, colleagues’, and families’ learning review, efforts, enrichment, and celebration?
Note that lesson design today can be considered lesson choreography. See related links: http://teachwellnow.blogspot.com/2013/02/todays-lesson-plan-ma-educator.html , http://teachwellnow.blogspot.com/2011/11/lesson-choreography.html

12. Review unit design, website, lesson plans.

13. Collect necessary materials and adapt room design to meet unit requirements.

14. Share the unit plans and website with the learning community: students, families, educators, leaders.

15. Execute unit roll out.

16. Analyze summative assessment and unit roll-out. Make decisions about unit revision and growth.

The New Massachusetts Teacher Evaluation Rubric: Actions?

I spent this week carefully analyzing the new Massachusetts Teacher Evaluation rubric elements for Standard One: Curriculum Planning and Assessment. You are welcome to read all of my specific posts (links at the bottom of the page), or you can simply use the information in this post to lead your efforts in a way that will meet Standard One with strength.

I completed a self assessment connected to the nine elements associated with this standard, and then turned the assessment into a color coded action list with the following categories:

With many of the elements' expectations I created a lesson design template and unit design template that leads curriculum planning and assessment forward with the intent and focus of the Massachusetts Teacher Evaluation Rubric. This was a complex task, but a worthy task since the Massachusetts' rubric represents thoughtful, research-based, student-friendly learning design. On my self analysis document, the areas highlighted in purple represent ongoing learning design work that will be done during the school year independently and with the learning community: students, families, colleagues, leaders, and the community.

A number of expectations related to Standard One need to be planned for and prepared prior to the school year in order to be effective with regard to student learning. I highlighted those activities in yellow. The new standards do require substantial school year preparation, much more than the average classroom or subject-area teacher can do in the one or two days of standard prep during the professional year.

Standard One also has substantial implications for professional learning. This will differ from teacher to teacher. I highlighted the implications for my practice in pink.

You are welcome to use the links included on this post to match your professional practice to Massachusetts' Evaluation rubric. In doing so, you will set the stage well for a proficient or exemplary evaluation, and for a job well done when it comes to teaching children well.

Please don't hesitate to forward comments, ideas, or questions with regard to this work. I will continue to reflect on the rubric as I tackle the remaining 24 elements.

Reflection Links:

Reflection #5
Reflection #6
Reflection #7
Reflection #8
Reflection #9

Collegial Collaboration
Lesson Planning Template
Unit Design Template

Teach Children Well: Journey of Self Reflection #9 (1C3)

This is the final element for Standard 1, 1C3: Sharing Conclusions with Students on the MA Teacher Evaluation Rubric. To me this standard essentially outlines the need for teachers to have regular, individualized coaching meetings with students. The teacher as coach is an effective educator role. The key to meeting this element is to set up a student coaching framework at the start of the year with a guiding coaching template, data/performance charts/portfolios, and start-of-the-year umbrella goals for the class. The first student-teacher meeting of the year should include the child's initial assessments (shared as appropriate related to student's developmental level, social/emotional readiness), the class goals, and a discussion aimed at creating student goals for the year in general, and for the first period in the teaching year (six weeks, two months?).

Standard I: Curriculum, Planning, and Assessment. The teacher promotes the learning and growth of all students by providing high quality and coherent instruction, designing and administering authentic and meaningful student assessments, analyzing student performance and growth data, using this data to improve instruction, providing students with constructive feedback on an ongoing basis and continuously refining learning objectives.

Indicator I-C Analysis: Analyzes data from assessments, draws conclusions, and shares them appropriately

Element 1C2: Sharing Conclusions with Students

Criteria (from exemplary rating):

Models and Establishes early, constructive feedback loops with students and families that create a dialogue about performance that create a dialogue about performance, progress, and improvement.

Key Points

Establishes early constructive feedback looks with students and families. What is your family- and student- feedback loop with regard to student learning?
Create a dialogue about performance, progress, and improvement. How do you support family and/or student performance meetings with a focus on coaching?