Louis, K. S., Marks, H. M., & Kruse, S. (1996). Teachers' professional community in restructuring schools.

American Educational Research Journal, 33(4), 757-798. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1163415. Taylor, B. M. (2011). Catching schools. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Collecting Data in your Classroom June 2014

Remember: A school is only as strong as its teachers are. We all need to work together towards a common goal, not for the board, the state or the national agenda, but because our children deserve our best every day, and because we deserve a workplace that honors our dedication and love of learning.

Common planning between grade levels

Ensuring principal involvement in the classrooms

Resources for collecting student data

Literacy

Issue 03 March 2014

Working together as a school and sharing ideas with colleagues

Our literacy team is made up of teachers, reading specialists, and our principal. Our goal is to develop a collective vision of how to develop independent, proficient, motivated readers in every grade of the school. Action Plan for Improving Instruction: Effective teachers will provide highquality intervention instruction each day that is intensive, explicit, comprehensive, and used to support students who are struggling with reading. Students who are behind their peers need a motivating, challenging guided reading small group lesson and a motivating, challenging intervention lesson each day to accelerate their literacy learning and reading abilities. Action Plan for Reading and Writing: Effective teachers will provide a balance in teaching skills and strategies and in helping students apply reading skills and strategies to reading, speaking, and writing about texts in authentic contexts. Effective teachers will make choices on content to differentiate instruction to meet students' needs.

There are so many new strategies for teachers to learn that it can become overwhelming and some teachers lose their motivation. Our goal is for our staff to share in the same vision for our students. It is important for our staff to stay in touch by working together as a school and sharing our ideas with colleagues. One of the ways we would like to share ideas with each other is by study groups. The importance of study groups are to improve ourselves as teachers, so we can improve the reading of our students (Taylor, pg. 143).

http://ed573groupproject.weebly.com

Research on effective schools has found that teachers in effective schools do continually put the children first.
(Taylor et.al., 2002, p.79)

We also believe common planning between grade levels and whole group meetings will be an asset to our school district. During these meetings, staff will discuss new instructional ideas, successes & failures, data, etc.

We had our teachers read this

Mmm, article on study groups to show

the importance of them. http://www.tolerance.org/blog/tea cher-study-group-can-changeschool-culture

Active work in a professional group is important to increasing teachers sense of craft.

(Louis et.al., 1996, p.758)

Literacy Coaches:
Model a new strategy or lesson to your class Observe you teaching a lesson and give immediate feedback during a conference Work with a student that requires intervention

Take place about twice a month Discussions based on the interests or needs of the group 10 minutes spent on reflections of teaching strategies 10 minutes discussing a new research article 15 minutes of peer sharing a video 15 minutes spent on looking at student samples 10 minutes deciding on the role for the next meeting

It is important for teachers to have continued growth and improvement in their literacy instruction. In order to continue with this school reform professional development for teachers is vital.

Collecting Student Data: Collect data three times a year Look at data three times a year Attend grade level meetings to discuss students needs once per month Share student data during whole group and/or grade level meetings Identify and support students requiring intervention Identify and support students reading at or above grade level

In order for this reform to be successful support needs to come from administration, staff members, and outside sources as well. A leadership team formed of the principal, literacy coach, special education teacher, and other grade level teachers are the main supporters for teachers in the building. This team will help plan the whole group meetings, start/assist the study groups, work with teachers, assist with data

reviews, and create new partnerships with parents. (Taylor, 2011 pg. 100) One member of the team will begin the modeling and coaching of other staff members. If there is no literacy coach than an experienced teacher willing to take on these duties will continue the modeling.

Identifying the need for support at our school has been found by our data, assessments of students, and staff meetings. In order to implement our reform plan our leadership team will take control and continue to work with staff throughout the course of the year. For our reform to sustain these changes, we need to make an effort to follow new instructional strategies and continue on our path to reach our Action Plan goals.

Below are learning ideas we have developed for our staff.

Study groups will allow teachers to focus on an area of interest to support best teaching practices. Collecting student data and reviewing as a team will help teachers to differentiate their instruction based on the needs from the data. Whole group meetings will help staff to discuss student data and collaboration of issues that arise.

Parent Partnerships
The leadership team can help develop ideas to promote a relationship with parents. This will make them feel more involved in their childs progress and want to continue their support at home.

Q: How can I encourage my students to read more nonfiction during independent reading time? A: Encourage your students to read nonfiction on their own by having them keep a reading log that lists the titles and genres of the texts they are reading. Also, ask them to fill out an interest inventory. When you confer with students, encourage them to read books, magazine articles, and online pieces about their topics of interest.