As our second semester begins we at Elsternwick have planned a series of 8 professional learning team meetings [PLT’s] on Monday nights to focus on the use of data to improve student learning. This carries on from the 6 PLT’s in semester 1.
On a slightly separate topic one of the focuses in semester one was how to establish PLT’s and how they are different from other teacher meetings. While we are moving away from this in semester 2 to an almost exclusive focus on data it will need to be re-established in 2011.
The effective use of data to improve student learning is one of our key improvement strategies outlined in the school’s strategic plan.
These meetings, which are planned by our leading teacher, use a number of data sets including: Words their Way spelling tests and assessment online adaptive maths tests from the years 3 -6 teams. In term 4 we will look at the Naplan [National Assessment Plan for Literacy and Numeracy] results.
Team leaders, who are being trained to use data effectively in their own classrooms, support these meetings to help classroom teachers focus their efforts.
I found these 3 short videos that may help focus and perhaps challenge teachers to continue the great improvement work they have started.
Video 1 focuses on the need for the select use of data to be done in collaborative teams [hopefully a function of our PLT’s]
Video 2 talks about the need for data to be useful for parents, teachers and students and that context is all important. So teachers need to consider data within the context of their students and of their classroom environment e.g. are student present or arriving on time whenI begin my instruction on this topic? This clip also looks at peer observation in classrooms.
Douglas Reeves in his article published in ASCD’s 2009 on the use of data gave 4 tips on its effective use:
1. more frequent than yearly use of data is more effective for closing the achievement gap [again our PLT’s meet this tip]
2. Start with a focused question: “Just what are the starting points for teaching spelling in my classroom?” or “It appears from the school test data that spelling is weaker than other areas of literacy and I think that’s true in my classrooms but what can I do?” [this is a work in progress and one of the better examples of this in 2010 was when the year 3/4 team posed these questions above].
3. Test a hypothesis: Will students improve if I group students according to their spelling needs identified through a test [say 4 groups focused] and teach specific spelling strategies each week. [this again in my opinion is a work in progress for us].
4. Go beyond the numbers to look at causes of student success and failure.
His finishing point is really important to me for it starts to turn the lense from purely looking at content in the curriculum – and don’t get me wrong getting students zone of proximal development within the curriculum is critical-
Only when we can articulate the “why” behind the data and turn the lens on our own teaching and leadership behaviors can we understand how to move from drowning in data to improving professional practice.
At some stage we must turn the lense on our instruction as well. In semester 2 we as a staff are relooking at the E5 instructional model this time with an initial focus of where this fits in now with our current improvement work – with the lense of peer observation in classrooms to name one thing.
Clip 3: is about a teacher gathering feedback or data from the students on the effectiveness of her instruction.
I’m hoping teachers might look at some of these clips prior to our first PLT for this semester as a way to set the context for our work together.
Parents might look at some of the clips so they are informed about our teacher improvement work for as I have written about before according to the work of Hattie and others outside the student themselves teachers are the next most powerful influence on student learning.
Finally colleagues in the wider community might want to contribute to our work by posting comments on what works for them on the effective use of data in classrooms to improve student learning.
