When we invite students into literature circles, we commit to teaching processes and skills rather than hyperfocusing on the surface features of any one title. Literature circle work provides teachers the opportunity to discover and leverage so much about their individual students and the strengths that they bring to the table. There is space to discover how we can help kids grow as learners too. This happens through effective formative assessment practices. Formative assessment is…
2006. I think this was the first time that I found myself facilitating a curriculum mapping initiative. Even then, it was all about culture ahead of curriculum. I was fortunate to have mentors who helped me seek representation from those who would be most affected by the work, ahead of doing it. They helped me establish better feedback loops. They challenged me to think hard about how I would sustain our learning and our work.…
I’ve been facilitating inquiry team meetings and helping teachers make meaning from standardized assessment data in New York State schools for well over a decade now. Experience has uncovered the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to understanding and responding to the information we’re provided. I know that certain protocols inspire the development of far better hunches than others, and establishing clarity about the purpose of the assessments and the limitations of…
I’ve been working with the English Department at Starpoint Middle School for ten years, and those who know me well appreciate the high regard that I maintain for this particular group of teachers (and their colleagues at the K-5 level). Very few educators have the opportunity, talent, or tenacity to accomplish what this department has over the last decade, slowly and with very careful intention. I’ve watched them design (and redesign and map) their own curricula, sharpen their…
I just wrapped up my first Google Hangout book study with Michelle Helmer, Lauren Ormsby, Karen Kondrick, Margie Sweetman, and Erin Wheeler. We’re exploring Ron Berger, Leah Rugen, and Libby Woodfin’s text, Leaders of Their Own Learning: Transforming School Through Student Engaged Assessment. I’ve worked in several Expeditionary Learning schools over the years. It was there that I became acquainted with learning expeditions and student-centered formative assessment approaches. So much of this work aligns with my personal vision…
When we’re paying attention, we learn things about our students that we’ve never considered before. Over the last three years, I’ve conducted lesson studies in roughly fifty classrooms with over 700 students. As “in the moment” formative assessment assumed a greater role in this work, teachers began to make some powerful discoveries about readers that inspired very specific and effective shifts in curriculum design and instruction. These are some of those stories: 1. Each time,…
Last week, Kim Yaris and Jan Burkins invited me to begin this conversation about text complexity and cognitive dissonance on their blog. Over the next few weeks, I’ll share more about this here and return to this space to link up the posts below as I go. Much of what I’ve been learning has emerged from my work with reluctant and struggling readers in classrooms. Curious to know what others are discovering as well.…
“The simple answer is that, in most cases, schools have made mistakes. In fact, this statement isn’t terribly helpful; after all, every school makes at least some mistakes. When it comes to data-driven instruction, however, the type of mistake that a school makes goes a long way toward determining whether or not it will succeed.” Paul-Bambrick Santoyo, Driven by Data: A Practical Guide to Improve Instruction. According to Bambrick-Santoyo, these are the eight mistakes that…
When I first began learning how groups of teachers might use data to empower practice and serve kids better, most of the models I studied felt very linear and seemed to be driven by trends in standardized assessment data. A decade ago, I used to spend quite a bit of time helping teachers make meaning from this kind of data, and then we would design common formative assessments that were much like the tests…
When I began Common Core lesson studies with elementary teachers two years ago, they made the same surprising observation in each of the classrooms I taught in that spring: the background knowledge that many readers shared was often very interesting. Some was even compelling. And much of it was completely inaccurate. This didn’t surprise us, but what typically happened next did: when I invited readers to share their background knowledge through talk prior to reading,…