The Whole School Success Partnership

Saturday,September 22nd, 2012

•improve teachers’ subject-matter knowledge in mathematics, science, and English Language Arts

•improve principals’ and assistant principals’ instructional leadership skills specific to mathematics, science, and English Language Arts

TWSSP Goals

•Ensure that all schools have an articulated and shared vision that reflects a belief in students’ capacity to learn. All students, teachers, and principals share responsibility for improving student achievement and recognize the importance of professional development and high quality collaboration in ensuring student success.

A Generation of Learners?

The one really competitive skill is the skill of being able to learn. It is the skill of being able not to give the right answer to questions about what you were taught in school, but to make the right response to situations that are outside the scope of what you were taught in school. We need to produce people who know how to act when they’re faced with situations for which they were not specifically prepared.

Seymour Papert

Welcome

• Change songs

What does the research say about successful schools?

Resources and data from the Education Trust (www.edtrust.org)

•Keep a “laser like” focus on what students need to learn•Collaborate on how to teach it

• Assess frequently to see whether students have learned it

• Use data to inform instruction

• Build personal relationships

Focus on what students need to learn

•Successful schools focus on standards •Successful schools do not focus instruction on the

state required tests, they focus on the standards

•Teachers spend collaborative time focusing on what students need to learn•Collaborative time is structured with a clear

agenda and rules of engagement

“The research is unequivocal: When schools build collaborative cultures, commit to all students’ learning, and use data systematically through ongoing inquiry into improving instruction, they improve results for students”

Nancy Love (2009), citing research from:Elmore, 2003; Loucks-Horsley, Love, Stiles, Mundry, & Hewson, 2003; Louis, Kruse, & Marks, 1996; Love, 2004; McLaughlin & Talbert, 2001; National Staff Development Council, 2001.

•Ensure that all schools have an articulated and shared vision that reflects a belief in students’ capacity to learn. All students, teachers, and principals share responsibility for improving student achievement and recognize the importance of professional development and high quality collaboration in ensuring student success.

•What do you believe about your own capacity to learn?•What do your students believe about

their capacity to learn?

We need leaders to create transformed schools using a new growth mindset: The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives. This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. Although people may differ in every which way- in their initial talents and aptitudes, interests, or temperaments- everyone can change and grow through application and experience.

Carol Dweck (2006: pp. 6-7)Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

Two Possible Teacher Actions that Promote a Growth Mindset

•Set up lessons as learning tasks not judgments of ability. Characterize the activity as a learning process and present skills and material as being learnable. Explain that “these skills are developed through practice and this task is an opportunity to cultivate these skills.”

•Praise the effort not the ability. For example say, “I see that you’ve been working really hard on your homework and your math scores are improving.”

From Mind-Sets & Equitable Education by Carol Dweckhttp://www.principals.org/portals/0/content/61209.pdf

•Teachers and principals commit to collaborating to improve instruction.

•Teachers and principals understand the role of learning targets in learning progressions and commit to using learning targets to engage students in lessons.

Workshop Goals

•I can use the PLC meeting structure to effectively collaborate with my colleagues to improve instruction and student achievement.

•I can develop clear learning targets within a learning progression and I can describe several strategies for sharing targets with students.

Learning Targets

communities

Read the article and complete a 3 x 2 summary:3 Interesting or New Things

2 Questions

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Break time

How are PLC meetings

structured and What do PLC members do during and

between PLC meetings?

PLCs in action…

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• Pausing• Paraphrasing• Posing Questions• Putting ideas on the

table• Paying attention to

self and others • Presuming positive

intentions• Pursuing a balance

between advocacy and inquiry

Thinking about your own PLC

•What ideas or practices modeled or discussed in this session can you incorporate into your PLC work this year?

•Use the PLC meeting structure

•Revise action plan based on new learning

•Recorder sends materials to Shannon and principal at end of each PLC meeting:

1) PLC meeting notes if appropriate

2) PLC Documentation Form

3) Revised Action Plans

Recorder sends materials to Shannon and principal at end of each PLC meeting:

1) PLC meeting notes if appropriate

2) PLC Documentation Form

3) Revised Action Plans

•Use the PLC meeting structure

•Revise action plan based on new learning

•I can use the PLC meeting structure to effectively collaborate with my colleagues to improve instruction and student achievement.

•I can develop clear learning targets within a learning progression and I can describe several strategies for sharing targets with students.

Learning Targets

Assessment for LearningFive Key Strategies

An idea is ‘big’ if it helps students make sense of lots of confusing ideas and experiences and seemingly isolated facts. It’s like the picture that connects the dots and reveals the image (big Idea) by connecting the component pieces (key concepts).

How can you organize your content in a way that allows students to build big ideas?

All plants and animals have

various external parts

Different animals use their body

parts in different ways to see, hear,

grasp objects, and move

from place to place.

Animals have various ways of obtaining

food and water. Nearly

all animals drink water or eat foods that contain water.

Living things have basic needs, and they meet their needs in various

ways.

Unit Big Idea

Learning Target

Learning Target

Learning Target

Teacher clarity and explanation of intention ranked as the 8th (of 138) most important contributor to learning.

Hattie (2009)

Clarifying Learning TargetsSharing Criteria for Success

Use “face your challenges” or “strive to the highest” goals instead of “do your best” goals.“Do your best” goals are easily attained by anyone. The performances of students who have the most challenging goals are over 250% higher than the performances of students with the easiest goals.

(Wood & Locke, 1997, in Hattie, 2009)

People perform better when they know the goal(s), see models, know how their performance compares to the criteria.

Rick Stiggins

Clarifying Learning TargetsSharing Criteria for Success

Unless we specify to students what the criteria for learning are, they will continue to be mystified as to what they are to do and what it is they are learning.

Grant Wiggins

Clarifying Learning TargetsSharing Criteria for Success

Criteria is what counts in an activity or task. Students of all ages need a clear understanding of the criteria by which--AND the level to which--their work will be assessed.Students can understand the differences in 4 levels of performance...not 100 (which is what giving a percentage is).

Clarifying Learning TargetsSharing Criteria for Success

The analogy that might make the student’s view more comprehensible to adults is to imagine oneself on a ship sailing across an unknown sea, to an unknown destination. An adult would be desperate to know where he is going. But a child only knows he is going to school... The chart is neither available nor understandable to him...Very quickly, the daily life on board ship becomes all important...The daily chores, the demands, the inspections, become the reality, not the voyage, nor the destination.

Mary Alice White

Think back to a lesson you taught yesterday...What was your learning target?

How did you share learning targets with your students?

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• Why is it important to share learning targets with your students?

• What do students need to know about a learning target in order to be successful?

Consider the following questions as you read Knowing Your Learning Target

•How have you successfully shared learning targets with your students?

•What impact have you observed on student achievement and/ or motivation?

If you have already read Knowing Your Learning Target

Why Learning Intentions Are

ImportantPages 51-55

When Are Learning Intentions Useful

Pages 56-61

Issues In Constructing Learning Intentions

Pages 61-65

Practical TechniquesPages 65-69

Resources

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A clear learning target will define for students:A clear learning target will define for students:

1) 1) WhatWhat students will be able to do when they students will be able to do when they ’’ve finished ve finished the lesson (assessment or performance expectation)the lesson (assessment or performance expectation)

2) What idea, topic, or subject is important for students to 2) What idea, topic, or subject is important for students to learn and understand so they can do this (content or learn and understand so they can do this (content or process goal)process goal)

3) 3) HowHow students will show that they can do this, and students will show that they can do this, and how how wellwell students will have to do it (criteria for success) students will have to do it (criteria for success)

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When you share your learning targets with your When you share your learning targets with your students communicate what todaystudents communicate what today’’s lesson s lesson should mean for them- as well as how this should mean for them- as well as how this target is related to the big ideas in the unit.target is related to the big ideas in the unit.

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• Students will be able to answer:

• 1) What will I be able to do when I’ve finished this lesson?

• 2) What idea, topic, or subject is important for me to learn and understand so that I can do this?

• 3) How will I show that I can do this, and how well will I have to do it?

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4242

As we focus instruction on big ideas and clear learning targets, we have a unique opportunity to use common language across subject areas.

ExamplesExamples

Look at the example learning targets.How can you share learning targets and

success criteria with your students?

What strategy will you use to share the learning target with your students?

Think about a learning target for one of your classes for next week.

Write a clear learning target including the success criteria and the strategy you will use to share the learning target.

How will you make your learning targets clear to students over the

next month?

What support will you need to do this?

Break

17

Break time

As a learner...

• I need a helpful schema, a framework, a touchstone, a guidepost, a strategy for making sense of what I am learning. In other words, I need a framework for my new content: I need a way to order, categorize and prioritize what I am learning.

• Grant Wiggins

Learning progressions that clearly articulate a progression of learning in a domain can provide the big picture of what is to be learned, support instructional planning, and act as a touchstone for formative assessment.

-Margaret Heritage

ScienceLearning Progressio

ns

What is A Big Idea

byGrant

Wiggins

51

Peer Review

My Learning Progression

Reflection

•How can learning progressions help focus you, and your students, on the big ideas in your curriculum?

Reflect

Commit to specific instructional actions before your next PLC meeting.

Share your commitment with your PLC. What support do you need?