2014-15 PDU Title Professional Development Unit

1. 2014-15PDU TitleProfessional Development Unit By: Jennifer Oxman Farrell B. Howell

2. During the course of this PDU, what three instructional strategies did I implement? What strategy worked best? Why? Question That! Before this PDU I was the one creating all of the questions for the books they were reading. I implemented Question That! for the last book we read, and found it to definitely increased the rigor. Having tried it, I now know that it requires a lot of modeling in order to get the students to use more of their critical thinking skills and to delve deeper into the book. After practicing, they were able to compose basic questions, however it was more challenging to get them to ask questions that required inferring, sequencing, and cause and effect. Socratic Seminar: With my 5th grade group, we were reading the book Jack’s Black Book. There was a situation between two characters, and originally I had them write to a prompt which stated: Who do you think should get the money? Use evidence from the text to support your answer. However, after reading the book, I decided to turn the topic into a Socratic seminar. Suddenly, it became a lot more engaging for the students as well as myself. I had the students get in two rows based on the character they supported. I then gave each student 3 paperclips and they had to turn in the paperclip each time they talked. This assured that every student got a turn, and for the quiet ones, it encouraged them to speak up more. I provided sentence stems on the board for them to refer to and I found that I was simply facility, while the students lead the conversations. One skill that they still need to practice is listening to each other rather than just making their point. Student Informative Writing to Families: This made the students more accountable for their learning and their growth, and I believe there was more buy in from them to achieve their personal goals and growth.

3. How did I apply the PDU strategies in my classroom/practice? (examples) Who did I collaborate with during the PDU? Discuss the ways you collaborated while implementing the PDU strategies. Sandi and I met and planned the Question That! for my second grade reading group which consisted of 5 students. The first day we did a pre test to assess what they were already able to do. For the second day, we came up with questions to model that included inferring, sequencing, and cause and effect to increase the rigor and digging deeper into the reading. For homework, the students took home a Question That and practiced writing questions for the new chapter. After a few days of practice, the students ended up cutting out their questions and then playing a game where their partner had o match the question to the correct character. At the end of the week, we did a post test to see the progress the students had made. While they were able to create more questions, they still need to practice on inferring, sequencing and cause and effect. The other way I collaborated was reading the book Rigor and Engagement for Growing Minds and my colleagues responses. We were able to ask each other questions and get ideas from one another based on what others were doing. Not only was the book helpful, but reading others responses definitely was beneficial.

4. What did I learn to do differently as a result of the PDU and strategy implementation in my classroom or in my practice? As a result of this PDU, I learned new strategies to increase the rigor in my instruction in all of my classes. Reading the book was extremely helpful to give me new ideas. While a lot of the time, the book was geared towards gifted students, I liked the idea of increasing rigor for all of my students even students that were significantly below grade level. I also found that when I increased the rigor, the student engagement also increased because they had choice and flexibility in their learning. I am definitely going to continue to put more of the learning in their hands. I loved that my reading group wrote their own personal letters home. I think that this made it more meaningful and relevant to them and the were excited to take the letters home and bring them back signed. My 5th grade students have even asked if we can do another Socratic seminar which was exciting to hear them eager and motivated to engage in their learning.

5. Why is this PDU action research process important to my students learning and to my growth as a professional? As an educator, I always want to learn more and grow as a learner myself, as well as help my students flourish, expand, and develop critical thinking skills. The opportunity to participate in this PDU on increasing rigor was a great way for me to grow and acquire more knowledge in ways to help my students continue to develop critical thinking skills, take ownership of their learning, and to learn from my colleagues and gain new ideas and perspectives. It also gave me the opportunity to reflect on previous lessons and become aware on how I could have increased the rigor.

6. PDU Data AnalysisReflecting on the data you have collected, how did this experience impact instruction, progress monitoring, student performance, and your own practice? After implementing some of the strategies into my lessons, I realized that increasing rigor was challenging and something that I will have to continue working with them on so that they improve in using their critical thinking skills. I loved Question That! but after teaching it for a week, my students still were not asking deeper questions that I was hoping for. I realize that this is new for them and me, and therefore it is going to take time. I am going to continue modeling and pushing them to ask more questions that entail inferring, sequencing, and cause and effect. I definitely had a more hands off approach when they were the ones asking the questions to each other, but I think I am still going to have to scaffold the lessons more and allow them for more practice.

7. How will I apply my new learning in the future to further my practice? What are my next steps? This experience definitely had a positive impact on my instruction and opened my eyes to how to make all of my lessons more rigorous. After reading the book, I realized that increasing rigor isn’t increasing the workload for my students or for me in my planning. It is just tweaking the lessons, and making sure that my students are thinking critically and taking more ownership in their learning so that it is more relevant for them. I am hoping to continue working on implementing the strategies I have already tried, along with others that I didn’t have a chance to attempt yet. I am excited to see how my students develop their critical thinking skills since I plan on implementing them at the beginning of the year.

8. Letter from student to family. They chose what they wanted to tell their parents. All students were excited to show their parents and brought their letters back signed.

9. Socratic Seminar with Sentence Stems

10. Pre and Post Question That!

11. Exit Ticket • Please write • I would like the opportunity to do another PDU on rigor to further my understanding and gain more strategies on rigor. I would also like the opportunity to lesson plan with colleagues to assure that all of my lessons have various rigorous strategies. • Two things that I took away from this PDU is new ways to implement rigor across the board in all content areas and all grade levels. How to collaborate with colleagues to plan rigorous lessons. • It would have been helpful to have started earlier in the year to implement the strategies earlier in the year so that they could have mastered more of the skills.