KLN South

1. KLN South March 1, 2012 Montgomery, AL

2. Guiding Questions • What have we accomplished in our role as “key leaders” in our district—in both transferring our own learning’s and supporting PCN schools? • How can we use our One-Page Instructional Target to enhance teaching and learning in our district? • In what ways will we document and measure impact of our participation in PCN and/or KLN?

3. Guiding Questions, cont’d • What is the “instructional core,” and why is it so important to student outcomes? • What are the rules of descriptive observation? • What is the potential value of Instructional Rounds?

4. Norms for Engaging in Dialogue • Listen Actively • Question to Expand Understanding • Respect Divergent Views • Suspend Judgment • Voice Your Personal View

5. Activity #1: Warm-Up—4-Box Synectic What?Four Box Synectic Why?To activate prior knowledge and experience with evaluating impact of professional development and share with colleagues How?Individually reflect, select a simile that relates to your conception of evaluating professional development, and share with colleagues. [See p. 2, Activity Packet.]

6. Overview of Template for Reporting Transfer, Teacher Use, and Impact on Students • Transfer of Knowledge/Learning • Documentation of Change in Practice (i.e., Implementation) Resulting from PCN and/or KLN Activities • Impact on Student Performance/Achievement (See pp. 3-4 in Activity Packet.)

7. Activity #2: Assisting Schools Develop Coherence—Say Something What?Say Something Why?To collaborate with a partner to make meaning of a short paragraph related to the importance of developing coherence How?Stand up, find a partner not at your table, read the paragraph on p. 5 of the Activity Packet; then, turn to your partner and say something about the passage. Listen to your partner say something to you.

8. Activity #3: Step-Back Consulting What?Step-Back Consulting Why?To listen actively to another district team talk about their past and future efforts to connect learning from KLN and PCN to the local setting How?Team reflection and dialogue in response to guiding questions; team conversation with another district team “listening in”; changing roles so that both teams have opportunity to talk and listen. [See pp. 6-8 in Activity Packet.]

9. Activity #4: Sharing of One-Page Instructional Target—Creating Visuals What?Sharing of One-Page Instructional Target with another district team Why?To learn from a sister district team’s experiences and to present own Target to an “audience” How?Team reflection and dialogue to review process by which One-Page Instructional Target was created; creation of a visual to support presentation to a sister district team. [See p. 9 in Activity Packet.]

10. The Instructional Core Students Content Teachers Instructional Rounds in Education, (p. 22)

11. Look forRelationships Instructional Rounds in Education, (p. 24) “It is the relationship between the teacher, the student, and the content—not the qualities of any one of them by themselves –that determines the nature of instructional practice, and each corner of the instructional core has its own particular role and resources to bring to the instructional process.”

12. Activity #5: Seven Principles Related to the Instructional Core—Picture It! What?Seven Principles Related to the Instructional Core—Picture It! Why?To develop a deeper understanding about the instructional core How?Read a short piece about one of seven principals associated with the instructional core; dialogue with colleagues to make meaning; prepare a short presentation to teach others. [See pp. 10-12, Activity Packet.]

13. The Discipline of Description—“Learning to See, Unlearning to Judge” “The discipline of description is . . . quite novel and counterintuitive for most educators. It must be learned, and some other habits—like using general or judgmental language or jargon—must be unlearned.” Instructional Rounds in Education, (p. 84)

14. More on Descriptive Observation—Say Something! “When you discipline yourself to stay in the descriptive mode, you are likely to notice more accurately what is happening in the classroom and your inferences will be on a firmer evidentiary foundation.” Instructional Rounds in Education, (p. 87)

15. Descriptive Observations Focus on the Instructional Core “The kind of observing we’re talking about here focuses not on teachers themselves but on the teaching, learning, and content of the instructional core. What is the task that students are working on? In what specific ways are the teacher and students interacting in relation to the task? By description, we mean the evidence of what you see—not what you think about what you see.” Instructional Rounds in Education, (p. 84)

16. Why Be Descriptive? “The basic reason is that we are searching for cause-and-effect relationships between what we observe teachers and students doing and what students actually know and are able to do as a consequence.” Use descriptive language, rather than judgments, because “cause and effect relationships” begin “with a common evidentiary basis.” Instructional Rounds in Education, (p. 86)

17. Examples of Judgmental & Non- Judgmental Description Description Includes Observer’s Judgment • Fast-Paced. • Too much time on discussion, not enough time on individual work. • Teacher used effective questioning techniques with a range of students. • Teacher read from a book that was not at the appropriate level for the class Description Without Judgment • Teacher asks, “How did you figure our this problem?” Student explains. • Student followed directions in the text to make circuit boards. • Student 1 asks student 2: “What are we supposed to write down?” Student 2: “I don’t know.” Instructional Rounds in Education, (p. 85)

18. 3 Key Questions to Focus on During Observations What are teachers doing and saying? What are students doing and saying? What is the instructional task?

19. What is Evidence? “By evidence, we mean descriptive statements of what you see … However, not all forms of evidence are equally valuable … So we speak of evidence as having large, medium, or small grain size – that is, being fuzzy or sharp.” (p. 92)

20. Large-Grained & Fine-Grained Evidence Large-Grained • Lesson on the 4 causes of the Civil War • Teacher questions students about the passage they just read • Teacher checked frequently for comprehension • Teacher made curriculum relevant to students’ lives. Fine-Grained • Teacher: “How are volcanoes and earthquakes similar and different?” • Prompt for student essays: “What role did symbolism play in foreshadowing the main character’s dilemma?” • Students made up questions about the book they’d just read. Instructional Rounds in Education, (p. 93)

21. Feedback Tips (p. 94) • Ask yourself “How is that relevant for what was happening in the classroom?” • Avoid the “dog that didn’t bark” description: describing what you didn’t see: • “There were no objectives on the board. • “The teacher didn’t call on anyone who wasn’t raising their hand.”

22. Possible Student Questions • What are you learning? What are you working on? • What do you do if you don’t know the answer or you’re stuck? • How will you know when you’re finished? • How will you know if what you’ve done is good quality?

23. Important Admonition “Like other skills, learning to see and hear the particulars of teaching practice requires practice. Like a muscle, it gets stronger with repetition and practice. The best way to strengthen the observation muscle is to observe lots of classrooms.” (p. 88)

24. Think-Pair-Share: Professional Practice “The view that practice is a matter of individual taste is profoundly anti-professional. “Professionals are not people who act according to their own individual idiosyncrasies and predispositions, but people who subscribe to a common body of knowledge and a set of practices that go with that body of knowledge, and who use mastery as the basis for determining who gets to practice.” Instructional Rounds in Education, (p. 160)

25. Instructional Rounds • A tool for bringing focus to a school’s efforts to improve teaching and learning • A discipline for descriptive observation • A protocol for engaging in conversations about what high-quality instruction looks like • A process for de-privatizing practice and building a community of shared practice

26. What areInstructional Rounds? “The rounds process is an explicit practice that is designed to bring discussions of instruction directly into the process of school improvement. By practice, we mean something quite specific. We mean a set of protocols and processes for observing, analyzing, discussing, and understanding instruction that can be used to improve student learning at scale. The practice works because it creates a common discipline and focus among practitioners with a common purpose and set of problems.” (p. 3, Instructional Rounds)

27. Instructional Rounds: 2 Learning Goals • Build skills of network members by coming to a common understanding of effective practice and how to support it. • Support instructional improvement at the host site by sharing what the network learns and by building skills at the local level. Instructional Rounds in Education, (p. 100)

28. The First Element of an Instructional Round: Host School Identifies a Problem of Practice • Focuses on the instructional core • Is directly observable • Is actionable (is within the school/district’s control and can be improved in real time) • Connects to a broader strategy of improvement (school, system) • Is a high-leverage strategy

29. A problem of practice becomes the focus for observation. • The problem of practice is highly transparent —the school faculty is involved in the formulation of the POP; the observers know the background and receive the POP in advance of the day of the instructional rounds. • The Alabama Quality Teaching Standards can make the POP even more “observable.

30. 1. Identify and frame a “Problem of Practice” 4. Brainstorm the next level of work 3. Debrief Observations 2. Conduct classroom observations to collect evidence related to the problem of practice Four Key Components of Instructional Rounds

31. “A Day in the Life of a School”

32. Observation Tips 1. Orient yourself to classroom • What grade? Content? • How many students AND adults in the room? • How many minutes into the class? 2. What are the students doing and saying? 3. What is the teaching doing and/or saying?

33. Observation Tips 4. Look at the task • What are students being asked to do? • What are they actually doing? 5. Look at patterns of interaction • Is it teacher-student-teacher? • Are students talking with each other? • Are there any student-initiated questions/comments?

34. Observation Tips 6. Listen to questions • What questions are being asked? • Who is asking them? • What are the responses? 7. Consider allocation of time • How much time is spent on each activity? • Periodically note time during the observation

35. Why is a systemic approach essential? “We firmly believe that creating a system focused on the ongoing improvement of instruction must be the central aim of any educational improvement effort. It is our ‘theory of change’ that students’ achievement will not improve unless and until we create schools and districts where all educators are learning how to significantly improve their skills as teachers and as instructional leaders.”—Tony Wagner, et. al., Change Leadership, San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2006.