Data Driven PLCs- Cyber Observing Excellence in Action

Do you ever wish you could be a fly on the wall of another PLC's meeting? We know the value of observing in classrooms, but have we ever considered the value of observing another dynamic and effective PLC in action? 
Knowing that it's impossible to be in two places at once, I'll try to offer a window in to other PLCs at Buckner. 

Here's this week's highlights: 

Wow! Check out some of your colleagues data driven PLC minutes. I know that many of you don't get the opportunity to see these gems, but they really are worth checking out. The collaboration opportunities are many.
Some snippets from the 2nd grade PLC minutes. 

Instructional/Behavior Strategies and Celebrations:

•     As a team we celebrated our narrative writing. In our ELA unit 5, the kids were just to get their feet wet with narrative writing. The past couple of years we have reflected and revised, but haven’t been happy with the outcomes. This year at extended planning we totally revamped this mini-unit. We began with what the students know about all great writing and then did a few days of reading like writers to notice similarities and differences between narrative writing and other types of writing we have done over the course of this year. We spent a day writing our beginning, middle and endings taken from a seed planted earlier in the year or a new moment. After that, we spent 4-5 days zooming in on one craft of narrative writing and trying it out in their current “piece”. The last few days of the mini-unit were revising/editing and publishing. For the amount of time spent on the min-unit, we were pretty impressed with the writing produced compared to previous years. We feel that we were successful with frontloading for the upcoming full blown unit on narrative, in unit 6.

·      Analysis of our March Reading Common Assessment and Math Common Assessments.

-    Reading Celebrations/Noticings: 

 

• -100% of our 2^nd graders were able to identify the main idea from the non-fiction text. In October and November a funnel graphic organizer, along with non-fiction texts to funnel out the important details and synthesize the main idea based on important details. Throughout the year, we have embedded main idea as we have read aloud non-fiction texts and when students have written non-fiction pieces.
  -97% of our 2^nd graders answered the determining importance question correctly. Again, in reading, writing, math and science/social studies we have determined importance. It has become almost second nature to our kids to think about what is most important. 

Math Common Assessment:

We celebrated that 98% of our students answered the value and expanded form questions correctly. We used place value concepts to introduce our math workshop at the beginning of the year and then came back to review during our Unit 5. We were impressed with the amount the students retained. We attribute these successes to our intentional use of place value vocabulary throughout all of our units.

-93% of our students answered the telling time and AM/PM questions correctly. We just finished our unit on time so it was exciting to see that the students understand how to tell time to the nearest 5 minutes. 

Technology and Next Steps:

We made a few revisions to our ELA plans. We are currently studying opinion writing. We decided to move our book trailers that we typically do at the end of the year to now. We are having the students share their strong opinions on the best book they have either personally read this year or that we have read as a class (model texts, read alouds, book clubs, ECT). The plan is to have the students create a list of their favorite books, determine what was most important from the books and why in their opinion they are the BEST books. Then, the student’s will work in a small group to write a script, create a storyboard and publish a book trailer using iMovie to share with the school their opinion on the best book and try to hook their audience (the school) into reading this book in their classes, over the summer or as one of their books in their smart stack. We plan to work on our book trailers the week before spring break and wrap up the first few days back from break. 

Buzzz! Did you feel like you were there? This is just one peek inside a single BES PLC. More to come!

Writing Walkthrough 2015

Over the past 5 years, our staff has come together to analyze student writing. We have one purpose: to make evidence-based noticings about the writing that is taking place at Buckner Elementary- Kindergarten-Fifth grade so as to determine successes and establish next steps.

Each year we participate in this school-wide analysis, we grow our writers. We see evidence of this when we look at our students' notebooks, drafts, published pieces, and reflections, and data has proven this to be true. Just looking at the last three years of our K-PREP scores, On Demand writing scores have improved 15%! Your efforts to learn more and try new things in the classroom ARE paying off!


Yesterday, we came together to read the writing of our students K-5. Through careful analysis, each of you sat with a team of teachers from a variety of grade levels to consider how Buckner students are growing as writers. You considered four different lenses as they traveled around the library taking in the collections of writing. 
Focus area 1: Opportunity and Variety- How frequently and in what ways are students asked and offered opportunities to write?  
Focus area 2: Expectations-What Common Core expectations (quality writing) do students display? Are students able to demonstrate quality writing in every content area?
Focus Area 3: Feedback- What types of feedback are students offered? Specific? Use of rubrics? Teacher, Peer, other?
Focus Area 4: Other Noticings: What other noticings do you have: technology? interests? etc.

The process was amazing! You spent time dedicating yourselves to reading the student collections, talking about the positive things they notice evidence of, and wrote down specific feedback for that grade level team to consider. 

The outcome was powerful! You stood in a circle around the library and shared a statement with the entire staff about the writing they noticed happening at Buckner. Here is a sampling of the powerful noticings: 

Sharing our feedback with one another.

• Wow! Such a variety in all content areas! 

• Engaging topics and organized thoughts! 

• "Stoplight"  (organized, coherent, and developed) paragraphing evidence! 

• Specific feedback and question to push students’ thinking deeper  

• Writing opportunities are occurring across all content areas and in all classrooms, including related arts!

• The caliber of student writing showcased intentional emphasis on writing standards in all grade levels and across all genres. Yeah!

• I was so impressed with our growth in regards to mechanics/conventions and sentence structure. * Our school-wide focus for this year! 

• The expectations for writing are incredible across all content areas

We also took time , as a staff, to name next steps and goals for our writing instruction. We are a growth-minded group, and we always strive to learn more and support students in every way possible. As soon as I compile the results of their suggestions for next steps, I'll post it.

Keep supporting your writers all the time: in writer's workshop, reading workshop, math workshop, science, social studies, related art, pull-out settings, etc.!  You are models and supporters of student growth- ALWAYS. That's because you are the B.E.S.T.!
Thanks for ALL you do! 

Junior Great Books Impacts Student Learning

Exciting news from our 2nd grade  PLC per their meeting minutes.

One thing you probably know about me is my passion for Junior Great Book Stories. I find such value in their unique story selection, strategies for building vocabulary, call for deep thinking, emphasis on using evidence from the text to support thoughtful responses, and focus on deep inquiry though dialogue. This format is one of the most profound ways to impact student learning and offer students an anchor for the kind of behaviors we want for our readers to transfer each time they read.  

Below is a testimonial from our 2nd grade PLC. Check it out!

 * As a team we celebrated completing Junior Great. This is our second year using The Green Man to wrap up character traits, character motives and making inferences. We all shared how taking a text over the span of a week and diving deeply into the text, helped our kids to have rich discussions about their inferences to their burning questions. It was amazing to hear 2nd graders referencing text, to support their inference and provide evidence for their thinking. Even though the text was well above many of our student’s grade level, even our kiddos who are in RTI were able to participate in the discussions and provide evidence to support their thinking. We have since noticed in discussions, students referencing their text and asking their peers to reference their texts, to support their thinking!

5th grade, having named JGB in their successes for high reading test scores on the K-PREP test,  is once again engaged in a class read of Lenny's Red Letter Day and then dividing up into groups so that students can compare that story to The Ghost Cat. I can't wait to see how the students respond. I am more than eager to hear their thoughts on the two stories and see the evidence of transfer in new and novel situations. 

3rd grade is also about to embark upon reading a JGB story to build upon students' schema for expression opinions. Through the story, directed notes, dialogue, and written responses, students will gain and move forward on their journey as a critical reader and thinker.

I can't wait to see the celebrations from their minutes!

We are about to administer the DRA to some of our kids in January and February. 

Critical Point #1- Fluency

Email Response from PEARSON about Fluency and the DRA2

Hello Sarah,
Since fluency is a key area used to determine a student's independent DRA Reading Level, must stop if they fall in the shaded area for Accuracy AND/OR Rate*. Even if a study has an IEP for extended time, you cannot give the student more time. 

This would be a modification to the assessment, not an accommodation.  There is a difference.  

Fluency is crucial to reading comprehension.  It may not seem to have a huge impact at the lower levels, but eventually it will take its toll on the students.  This is non-negotiable.  

Giving students with an IEP more time to do the written comprehension is much different since timing is not part of the comprehension score.

Sincerely,

DRA2 Specialist

Pearson 2014​

* And must be in the independent range of point when you add up all 4 Fluency cells on the final rubric. 

Back to Building Schema for Mechanics & Conventions

Mechanics Mondays- “Making Language Studies Meaningful” The KCAS conjunction scaffold by grade level 1-Use frequently occurring conjunctions (e.g. and, but, or, so because) (e.g.= some examples) 2-Continue to support students' understanding of conjunctions to form more developed sentences. 3-Use coordinating and subordinating conjunctions 4-Work to master the previous conjunction concepts 5-Use correlative conjunctions (e.g. either/or, neither/nor) CONJUNCTION JUNCTION Music & Lyrics: Bob Dorough

Conjunction Junction, what's your function?

Hooking up words and phrases and clauses.

Conjunction Junction, how's that function?

I got three favorite cars

That get most of my job done.

Conjunction Junction, what's their function?

I got "and", "but", and "or",

They'll get you pretty far.

If you are like me, you hear the word conjunction and Sunday morning Schoolhouse Rock cartoons pops into your head. I see the train cars, hear the tune, and sing the words above. I can honestly say that don't recall learning about this language tool, or every considering why a reader would need it, but hope that I can change that pattern for our students.

Can you define a conjunction and explain it in simple terms? YES!

A regular old conjunction, also known as a coordinating conjunction, is a word that, as stated in the song, connects/“hooks up” parts in a sentence- parts that are of equal importance. As authors, we strive to write developed sentences. We work to stretch them out so they become more complex, and we must rely on conjunctions to do so. Our favorite mechanics master, Jeff Anderson refers to the most common coordinating conjunctions as FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so). Please know there are more.

Subordinating conjunctions are the words that “hook up” an independent clause and a dependent clause. The most common include: after, although, as, as far as, as if, as long as, as soon as, as though, because, before, if, in order that, since, so, so that, than, though, unless, until, when, whenever, where, whereas, whenever, while.

Correlative conjunctions work as “partner pairs” to conjoin groups of words of equal importance in a sentence. They include: either…or, not only… but also, neither…nor, both…and, whether…or, just as…so. I often consider these my “see-saw” conjunctions. As writers become more sophisticated, the correlative conjunctions become more useful and natural. Students will encounter these conjunctions in their texts and be expected to use them in their writing.

As readers, we crave a sweet harmony of varied sentences. We like to read some short ones and we like to mix it up with longer, more complex ones. Whether we’re reading fiction or non-fiction, the craving is still the same.

Examples in Action:

Coordinating conjunction

“You can give me the books, and I’ll check them out for you, Ron,” she said gently.

-From Rose Blue’s and Corinne J. Naden’s book Ron’s Big Mission

Subordinating conjunction

Because I am the oldest, my father told me first, and now it’s my turn to tell the others.

-From Sandra Cisnero’s vignette Papa who Wakes up Tired in the Dark

As soon as Martin and other black leaders in Montgomery heart what had happened, they rushed into action.

                        - From Martin Luther King, Jr.:The Fight for Freedom by Joanne Mattern

Correlative conjunctions

I will either go to batty looking for a correlative conjunction in a mentor text from home or I will go to sleep and continue the search tomorrow. 

-Sarah Whitt

While it’s not as imperative that our students know for formal name for these language tools, it is imperative that we teach children to recognize and write more complex sentences. We have a duty to help them reach beyond the simple sentence and must help them comprehended what a writer is doing when he/she uses conjunctions- words that “hook up” words, phrases, and clauses.