Waldron Instructional Partnership

1. WaldronInstructional Partnership Wednesday, March 18, 2009

2. Review: Where We Were • 360° Evaluations of Instruction • Self-Assessment • Peer Observation • Student Feedback

3. Use 360° Evaluations to Identify Needs • Triangulate data • Find individual and school-wide areas for improvement • Target identified needs

4. Last Meeting: Scaffolding • Scaffolding = • Developing steps that lead students to greater rigor • Usually requires teacher-made assignments and documents • Rarely can be done with only textbook ancillary materials

5. This Month: Pacing and Monitoring Pacing: Moving the lesson so that it is appropriate to • the content • the students • the situation.

6. Pacing: What It’s Not • Teacher-centered • Text-centered • ADE-centered • Other-centered

7. Top 10 List • On your index card, write the top 10 skills students need to learn in your class this year. (If you teach multiple courses, do this for one course.) • Go back and rank them, 1-10. 1 is most important; 10 is least important. • Go back again, and rank them ABCDF: A is easy; F is hard.

8. Top 10 List • How much time did you spend on 1, 2, or 3 today? • How much time did you spend on the F’s today?

9. Depth over Breadth • Examine the items that are actually tested each year. • There aren’t that many. • Focus in-depth on the things that count. • Save breadth for May, substitutes, pep rallies, etc.

10. Pacing Problems Too Fast Too Slow Students get lost Students assume the information is useless Students no longer respect the content or the class Behavior problems • Students get lost • Not enough time to process and synthesize • Not enough time to consider alternative applications • Fewer HOTS • Behavior problems

11. Pacing Charge • Reflect on the pacing in your class • Make changes as necessary and as possible • When you observe peers • Watch for and comment on pacing • Be critical, as in critical-thinking

12. Monitoring Monitoring = Assessing all students’ understanding in multiple ways and at multiple points in a lesson and using results of monitoring to adjust the lesson

13. Monitoring: What It’s Not • Using proximity • Asking the whole class, “Any questions?” • Collecting homework, placing a grade on it, returning it • Other?

14. Monitoring: What It Looks Like • Determining (each and) every student’s progress on (each and) every skill and TA (task analysis) • C4Us • Exit slips • Homework graded and returned with feedback • Feedback must be specific enough for students to improve their performance

15. Monitoring: What It Looks Like • Walking around the room and examining student work. Commenting, praising, critiquing, providing feedback. • Individual student conferences regarding work. • Questioning every student about a skill. • Other?

16. Monitoring Charge • Reflect on monitoring in your classroom. • Try adding 1 systematic monitoring method to your class. • Discuss the impact of this method with your peer observer. • When you observe peers, look for systematic and unsystematic monitoring methods. • Be objective and critical.

17. Quick review Pacing Monitoring Avoid whole-group methods Use results to make changes Use a variety of methods to get real information SYSTEMATIC • Let students and content set the pace • Don’t let teacher preferences or textbooks set the pace DEPTH OVER BREADTH

18. A Sample Exit Slip