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Questions Answered!

On this page, learning community veterans Bill Ferriter, Allen Ellzey, Parry Graham and Tad Sherman will answer questions about how to making professional learning a priority.

If you've got a question that you're interested in having answered, email it directly to Bill: wferriter [at] hotmail [dot] com. He'll see that an answer is posted promptly!

Questions Answered!
Common Assessments
Supporting Student Learning
Learning Community Results
Team Configuration

Common Assessments

This section will include questions related to common assessments.

How much trouble did your teachers have with writing questions that were valid for their common assessments?

For my learning team---a group of sixth grade language arts and social studies teachers---this process was incredibly difficult...and one I don't think we've mastered yet despite significant interest and effort on our part. Quite simply, none of us had ever had formal preparation in the area of assessment or data management!

As a result, we've struggled over the last few years to be truly effective at using data to inform our decision making. While we try to give common assignments---and then to compare the results on those assignments across classrooms---deep down, we recognize that our assignments may not be accurately tied to the standards that we think they are supposed to assess.

I think this capacity gap is all too real in many schools. There's a flawed assumption that teachers will be capable assesors simply because we look at student work all the time. While it is true that we always have a sense of student strengths and weaknesses based on our experiences with hundreds of students, PLC work requires a measure of assessment understanding and ability that most teachers lack.

Avoid the mistake, however, of simply providing teachers with a collection of predetermined assessments developed beyond the classroom! While it may seem tempting to create assessments that are valid FOR teachers----and in fact, many teachers may appreciate having that task taken off of their plate----doing so robs teachers of the most important "product" of professional learning communities: Powerful conversations with colleagues.

Discussing common assessments requires teachers to wrestle with foundational issues that many teacher teams dance around. Together, peers have to decide what it is that students need to know and be able to do---and then discuss what "mastery" looks like. When common assessments are created by professionals outside of a team, those conversations are avoided----and learning is lost.

So how do you support the development of assessment capacity in your teams and teachers?

Start by providing opportunities for professional development to members of learning teams. Book studies surrounding the use of data in the classroom are often productive and well received. The development of data leaders within each learning team---who are provided with ongoing training in the best strategies for assessing data---is also a step in the right direction. Finally, consider developing a library of common assessments for each subject that can be used as exemplars for teams that are working together.

And exhibit patience! Not all teams will develop data mastery at the same rate----which often pressures those in supporting roles to create and implement solutions as administrative decisions. While doing so ensures that you'll get a standardized "product" across your building, it also ensures that teachers miss out on the process of working through powerful conversations about teaching and learning!

For more information, check out this article that I recently wrote about common assessments titled: My Assessment Nightmare:

http://plctools.pbwiki.com/Session+Resources#AnAssessmentNightmare

Hope this helps,

Bill Ferriter

Supporting Student Learning

This section will include questions related to supporting student learning.

I would like to know more information about your guided study period. Who runs it? When does it happen? How long does it last? What exactly is done?

Our guided study period is a relatively new experiment here at Salem Middle School....in fact, this is the first year that we've had it in place....and I can tell you that as a regular classroom teacher, I'm absolutely jazzed that our school has worked to support remediation efforts beyond the classroom.

All too often, we expect classroom teachers to be the first, second and third responders when a child doesn't learn, and that's simply not possible. With curriculums that are overwhelming to begin with, there has to come a point when we "move on," even if there are one or two students who continue to struggle.

That's when our guided study period kicks it. It is designed as a safety net for the handful of students who continue to struggle after classroom teachers have provided remediation opporutunities and experiences. Together with their teams, teachers identify students who are in need of extra support and refer them to our guided study coordinators----who are currently two part time teachers (one certified in reading and the other in mathematics) splitting one full time position---and to our guidance staff.

Once a decision is made to support a child, they are enrolled in guided study as one of their elective classes. This period runs every day for 50 minutes---and students must remain in the class for a full quarter. While that requirement doesn't fit perfectly with our vision of a flexible support period that children can flow into on an as needed basis, it was necessary for scheduling purposes and to fit the current expectations of our state for the way that students spend time in school.

After communicating with the regular classroom teacher, our guided study coordinators then begin providing daily lessons reinforcing the concepts that students are struggling with. Lessons are planned, delivered and assessed by these coordinators---and ongoing conversations about student progress are held with the regular classroom teacher. Because guided study classes average between 3 and 7 students, intensive attention can be given to each child by guided study teachers.

The majority of our students will never make it to the guided study period because remediation and enrichment efforts at the classroom level will be enough to help them master the content that they are struggling with. Guided study, however, provides an outlet for students who still struggle after classroom teachers have exhausted every remediation strategy possible and must move on in the curriculum.

Does this make sense? Is there anything I'm leaving out that you want to know more about?

Signed,

Bill Ferriter

Learning Community Results

This section will include questions related to the impact that learning community work has on students and schools.

Does your school data indicate that the achievement gap between black students and Latino students has been closing?

This is a difficult question for our school to answer because we're a suburban school with an interesting mix of students from other cultures. We tend to see more Asian and Indian students in our classrooms than African American or Latino---so the gap between traditionally underperforming minority and majority populations isn't an issue that we wrestle with.

What we do struggle with is encouraging continued growth in high performing students----which is important in our state (North Carolina) because a growth model of student performance has been in place for decades. We aren't shooting for static targets. Instead, we're shooting for expected growth targets that are set by the state based on trends in student performance across subgroups and socio-economic backgrounds.

That means that our schools are rated based on comparisons with schools serving similar student populations----and all schools are expected to promote high growth in their student populations. For us, that means taking kids who are achieving at some of the highest levels in our state and moving them further. That, in and of itself, can be a challenge.

And it is a challenge that schools across our state struggle with. If you look at performance numbers, we're seeing drops in the performance of what we call our "Level 4" students. What makes this challenge even more focused is that our parent population has incredibly high standards and expectations for our school. The pressure that they place on teachers to promote growth regardless of current level of performance is almost unparrelled.

Our school has responded well to this pressure and attention, having made high growth targets for each of the three years that we've been opened. We're one of the top performing middle schools in our county and state when compared to other schools serving similar populations----and were recently recognized as one of the top 25 schools in North Carolina at promoting high growth rates in the population that we serve.

We attribute that success with a population that has struggled to show growth in North Carolina to the work that we're doing on our professional learning teams. We're essentially identifying practices that work with our unique student population and amplifying them across all classrooms on our halls. Like most buildings, we've always had individual teachers who were able to promote growth in the kinds of students that we serve, but their efforts were locked behind closed doors. Through collaboration, those efforts are now being catalogued and replicated for all students.

Now don't get me wrong----our school doesn't have to struggle with some of the same social and emotional challenges that present barriers for teachers working in high poverty schools and communities. But we have been very successful with the student population that we serve when compared with other schools serving similar populations. In an "apples to apples" comparison, we're coming out with some additional "shine!"

Could that be replicated in buildings serving different student populations?

I think so!

Hope this helps,

Bill Ferriter

Team Configuration

This section will include questions related to the configuration of professional learning teams.

How do PLTs work when you have one Math, one English/Language Arts, one Science, and one Social Studies teacher for grades 6, 7, and 8? Do you recommend working with other grade-level teachers?

In my experience, the most immediately effective way to create PLTs is by having same-grade, same-subject teachers work together (i.e., in a middle school, all of the 7^th grade Language Arts teachers work as a PLT). I say this because this type of configuration allows teachers to have in-depth discussions about common curriculum, to create common assessments, to analyze data from common assessments, and to commonly plan interventions or enrichments at the same grade level in the same subject.

However, your question makes it clear that this is not an option at your school because you only have one teacher for each subject at each grade level. So what, then, is the best configuration for a PLT? Vertical teams of teachers teaching the same subject, or horizontal teams of teachers teaching different subjects?

In my opinion, the answer is “it depends”. It depends on the needs and character of your school. For example, does your school have a lack of curricular alignment from one grade to the next (e.g., the 6^th grade math teacher spends very little time focusing on probability, so the 7^th grade math teacher has to spend extra time on it to catch students up)? Do your students demonstrate a pattern of skill deficits within a subject area from one grade to the next (e.g., a large number of students struggle with non-fiction writing at each grade level)? If so, then vertical teams might be the best solution.

If, on the other hand, your students exhibiting a skill deficit at a grade level that spans across subject areas (e.g., 7^th grade students exhibiting weak reading comprehension skills that impact their ability to solve word problems in math and read Science and Social Studies texts), then horizontal teams might be the way to go.

Whichever type of team you choose, I think a couple things are of critical importance. First, that the decision about teaming be based on clear needs identified by a careful and deliberate analysis of student learning data. Second, that teams be given the time, resources, and support necessary to work together. Third, that teams have certain expectations about how they will work (e.g., creating agendas before meetings, establishing team norms, keeping meeting minutes, etc.).

And fourth, that teams focus on teaching and learning. Too often, when teachers at the same grade level teaching different subjects meet, or when cross-grade departments meet, the focus is on non-teaching and learning topics, such as creating a grade-wide discipline policy or deciding on Language Arts textbook orders. Not too diminish those conversations and topics—they are important—but they should not be the focus of PLT time.

PLT time must focus on a deep analysis of curriculum (e.g., cross-grade math teachers discussing curricular alignment from one grade to the next), the development of assessments (e.g., creating cross-subject reading comprehension assessments), analysis of assessment data (e.g., the 6^th and 7^th grade Science teachers helping the 8^th grade Science teacher find patterns in his students’ assessment data) , and instructional intervention or enrichment (e.g., creating cross-grade study support for students struggling with the same skills).

I hope this helps, and good luck!

Parry Graham