2014-15 Student Learning Objectives Professional Development Unit

1. 2014-15Student Learning ObjectivesProfessional Development Unit By: Lindsay Reiter Southmoor Elementary

2. During the course of this PDU, what three instructional strategies did I implement? What strategy worked best? Why? My SLO was called “Collaborative Discussions.” I worked with first and fourth graders on developing good habits of discussion. Both groups learned to listen and talk only in turn, speak in an audible voice, speak in complete sentences, interact with their peers using eye contact and by praising their peers thinking, and building off another’s answer. Fourth graders learned the additional skills of evaluating others’ responses and prompting peers with universal prompts. The three instructional strategies I implemented were self and teacher evaluation through teacher created rubrics, talking chips, and sentence starter conversation cards. The strategy that worked best was the talking chips. Each student was given two colored “talking” chips. Every time a student participated in the conversation and talked, he/she put one of their chips in the middle of the table. Talking chips provided other students with a visual representation of who had participated in the conversation and who had not contributed yet. They helped ensure that all students participated and prevented one or two students from monopolizing the conversation. After implementing the use of talking chips, I saw students’ scores improve, especially those of shy and reluctant speakers.

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. I applied the PDU strategies on a daily basis. After each habit was taught, I added it to a class poster called “Habits of Discussion.” This rubric included the name of the habit, a description of what it was, and a picture of what it looked like. After learning and practicing a habit, I constantly reinforced them in our daily lessons. Every month we had a formal conversation during which I scored students on a rubric and after which students self-evaluated themselves on a student friendly rubric. The use of the rubric allowed students to see how their skills were improving and what they still needed to work on. I started implementing the use of talking chips in February. Students loved the tactile piece to the conversation as well as visually being able to see who had spoken and who still needed to speak. When it was clear to me that students were struggling with using complete sentences and building off each other’s comments, I provided students with sentence starter conversation cards. Each card had a list of 12 sentence starters that encourage building off each other’s comments and prompting peers for additional information. Students chose two sentence starters to use during each conversation. I collaborated with my partner teacher Mariana Doyle and our SLO coach Tony Sievert in implementing this SLO. We met with Tony on a monthly basis. He helped ensure that we were following the district SLO process, assisted in developing rubrics, and analysis of student work. Mariana and I met on a weekly basis to plan, analyze data, and discuss student performance.

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 an ESL teacher I have always taught students to use academic language when speaking, but this PDU helped me broaden my focus from just teaching academic language to teaching all of the habits that contribute to a strong conversation. I intentionally taught students good listening habits, such as making eye contact with the people you are speaking with, speaking in an audible voice and in complete sentences. After learning the basics of participating in a conversation we added more complex skills such as building off what someone else said and elaborating on your answer when someone asks for more detail, among other things. Teaching each habit separately, and intentionally teaching students how to have a conversation, in addition to how to use academic language, is something I plan to continue to do in future years.

5. Why is this PDU action research process important to my students learning and to my growth as a professional? I used the PDU action research process continuously throughout the school year as I implemented my SLO work. I began by identifying oral language development as a personal growth area for the school year. After learning about the Habits of Discussion from the book Great Habits, Great Readers by Paul Bambrick-Santoyo, Aja Settles, and Juliana Worrell and hearing about its success when implemented by other DPS teachers, I decided to focus my SLO work on teaching my students the Habits of Discussion. Throughout the year my teaching partner and I, with the help of Tony Sievert carefully planned lessons that would target each habit. We analyzed data at team meetings and discussed how we could modify our instruction. This cycle of gathering data, reflecting, deciding on a course of action, documenting the results, and sharing our findings allowed me to deeply analyze students’ growth, their strengths, and their weaknesses. Continually revisiting a small group of students’ growth and oral language development in this precise way helped me to become a more reflective and intentional teacher. This process also helped keep my focus on conversation habits and oral language skills throughout the entire year.

6. PDU Data AnalysisReflecting on the data you have collected, how did this experience impact instruction, progress monitoring, student performance, and your own practice? This was the first time I’ve ever recorded students’ oral conversation habits using a detailed rubric. The rubric allowed me to track specifically which habits students struggled with and the habits with which they were secure. As a result, I was able to determine when I needed to slow down and review a specific habit and when students were ready to learn a new habit. Collecting and analyzing data in this way helped me pace my instruction to meet the needs of my students. When I noticed that students were struggling with speaking in turn and allowing all members of the group contribute to the conversation, I began using talking chips. When my data showed that students were struggling with building on each other’s comments and using complete sentences, I introduced students to the sentence starter conversation cards. Ideas like these helped make the abstract concept of meaningfully participating in a conversation more tangible for students. In addition, allowing students to self-evaluate their conversation skills helped make students more aware of how they participated in the conversation and what they could work on next time.

7. How will I apply my new learning in the future to further my practice? What are my next steps? I plan on teaching the habits of conversation again next year to my students. During this school year I focused my SLO work on two grade levels, first and fourth grade. Next year, however, I plan to expand teaching the habits of conversation to all of my groups. I also plan on spending less time building strong listening habits and more time building strong speaking habits. I spent most of the first semester working with students on building listening habits. I felt like this was time well spent however as I taught the more complex speaking habits, I felt like I ran out of time at the end of the second semester for students to use the skills securely. Next year, students will already have had exposure to the habits of conversation and we can expand on the foundation we laid this year.

8. PDU Artifact #1a • Monthly Student Data Catcher – Beginning of Year

9. PDU Artifact #1b • Monthly Data Catcher – End of Year

10. PDU Artifact #2a • Teacher Created Habits of Discussion Rubric

11. PDU Artifact 2b

12. PDU Artifact #3 • Teacher Created Student Self-Evaluation Rubric

13. Exit Ticket • Please write • What support(s) do you need to further your professional growth in future PDUs? • It helps to have time at the beginning of the year and on teacher work days to plan with teammates and analyze data. • 2 things that you took away from the PDU this year • A deeper understanding of the district SLO process • Importance of collaboration • 1 piece of constructive criticism • It would be great to have more opportunities to share our work with other SLO teams.