Children First Intensive

Children First Intensive CFN 6: Refining Inquiry Foci and Goal Setting Frankie and Johnnie’s, January 23, 2010 Bob Cohen, NL; Deena Abu-Lughod, SATIF Victoria Alicea-Concepcion, Brandon Alvarez, Germaine Behagan, Jo Ann Benoit, Deirdre Burke, Frederica Capshaw, Alan Godlewicz, Katherine Marshall-Polite, John O’Neill, Nairoby Pena, John Strachan, Jessica Torres, Mary Ann Vance

Rationale: Well Developed Schools 3.1: Have a “theory of action” – focused school-level goals and action plans that explicitly link change to accelerated student learning. 3.2: Have teachers and teacher teams use data to set differentiated annual and interim goals for groups of students which receive supports and extensions, and have team and classroom level goals that leverage changes in classroom practice. 3.3: Have systems to track progress, adjust plans and goals during the year, target individual students, provide feedback to students and parents, and show evidence that the feedback is understood and used. 3.4: Have teachers with systems to measure progress towards interim goals for groups of students and targeted individual students anda culture that shares and studies this information.

Inquiry Spaces as a lens Well developed schools are expected to have all teachers engaged in the practice of Inquiry. Inquiry Spaces offer a lens into how schools are using data to identify needs of particular subgroups of students and what goal setting and progress monitoring look like in the school. Today, we’ll look at Inquiry Spaces information to see what it reveals about our capacity to set annual goals and interim benchmarks as a microcosm.

Exploratory Questions An exploratory question requires that the team identify possible research-based instructional strategies that can address the skill need. For example, what strategies can accellerate language acquisition of ELLs? What can we do to help students with decoding and sight word acquisition to increase their fluency? How can we strengthen students’ descriptive writing ability? Exploratory questions generally begin with “What strategies…”, “What skills…” or “What can WE do to…”. They do not yet specify exactly what those strategies or skills are, so the team is not yet able to design lessons/interventions to address the needs. You can create a long term goal in relation to the exploratory question, before, after or simultaneously with formulating the question. For example: By June, students will increase their average score on the Periodic Assessment for ELLs from 25% correct in November to 50% correct, and move from a Beginning level on the 2009 NYSESLAT to an Advanced level.

Pro-Active Inquiry Questions A pro-active inquiry question is formulated after the instructional strategy has been identified through research and examination of teacher work and existing curriculum. It connects the instructional strategy to the desired outcome, and follows the pattern: How can [the strategy] impact [the desired student outcome]. For example, how can the use of sentence frames help ELLs understand and use correct subject-verb agreement? How can the use of flash cards and magnetic letter boards accellerate student acquisition of sight vocabulary? How can visualizing impact students’ listening skills? How can modeled writing and instruction in vivid vocabulary support students’ ability to write descriptive sentences and paragraphs? Once you have a pro-active inquiry question, you can set a specific interim goal to measure progress. For example: The baseline writing assessment showed that students used an average of 3 descriptive words in a 5 sentence paragraph. At the end of six weeks of modeled writing and vocabulary work, students will use an average of 2 descriptive words per sentence in a 6 sentence paragraph.

Concept Attainment – Connecting to SS Focus Question: Can engagement in mini-research impact students‘ quality of written responses to Regents based DBQ essays and/or Thematic essays in specific units of study? Goal: The scores of students who engage in mini-research tasks focused on the use of outside information will improve by 10% from our Regents based baseline assessment to our Regents based end of year assessment.

Inquiry Focus Handout • Using your own school’s focus questions, work with another school to generate pro-active research questions (Part I) or flesh out the end-of-year and interim goals and benchmarks and the assessments you will use for progress monitoring (Part II).

SMART Goals

SMART Goals: Sample Revisions

The best SMART goals… • Indicate the students’ starting point; • Indicate the students’ expected end point; • Include ALL target population students in the goal. You will evaluate your success by seeing how many of those students actually make the goal. Avoid stating that “75% of the students will…” • Specify the exact assessment that is used for the baseline and use a parallel assessment for the endline. • The skill or subskill is specific enough to be measured. • End-of-year goals have clear, measurable INTERIM checkpoints (3-4 during the year)

SMART Goals: Concept Attainment • Indicate the students’ starting point; • Indicate the students’ expected end point; • Include ALL target population students in the goal. You will evaluate your success by seeing how many of those students actually make the goal. Avoid stating that “75% of the students will…” • Specify the exact assessment that is used for the baseline and use a parallel assessment for the endline. • The skill or subskill is specific enough to be measured. • End-of-year goals have clear, measurable INTERIM checkpoints (3-4 during the year)

Goals and Benchmarks: Reading Examples 4th grade student was reading at an end-of-year Grade 2 level. Goal is to make 1 ½ years progress, to a mid-Grade 4 level.

Goals and Benchmarks: Try It Complete this for one of your teams.

Virtual Support for the Quality Review • Check out the Promising Practices Library on ARIS Connect. You will find artifacts and videos that connect to selected Quality Review indicators to support your ability to know what each one looks and sounds like. • https://www.arisnyc.org/connect/node/408616/community • https://www.arisnyc.org/connect/node/408616/community • You will find documents like the Rigor Checklist there.

Thank You and Next Steps • Complete the evaluation. • ELA Best Practice Follow Up Conference: Tuesday, February 23, 2010 from 8:00-2:30 at Eastwood Manor, 3371 Eastchester Road, Bronx • Mathematics Best Practice Follow Up Conference: March 4, 2010 from 8:00-2:30 at Eastwood Manor, 3371 Eastchester Road, Bronx CALL FOR PRESENTERS: Looking for promising practices in ELL instruction, integration of technology, higher level thinking, writing, curriculum mapping, lesson design, student self-assessment, looking at student work

Children First Intensive