November 20th, 2015
“Why did students struggle with this? How do we re-teach it?”
After 46 days of instruction, it should be clear to teachers who are their struggling students and what they each struggle with the most. However, knowing “who” and “what” is only one half of the equation in planning effective interventions for students in desperate need of them.
The article “Asking the Right Questions in PLC” argues that teacher teams should ask and answer four key questions when analyzing student outcomes:
– What do we need to re-teach?
– To whom do we need to re-teach it?
– Why did students struggle with this?
– How do we re-teach it?
Over-stressed and often lacking time to meet with colleagues, it’s easy for all of us to focus only on the first two questions and not allocating sufficient time to fully address the “Why” and the “How”. As we dig deeper to find ways to support students, consider the following questions when analyzing student work:
– What do you think made some items difficult for students?
– What are some possible sources of confusion?
– What do students’ wrong answer choices tell us about their errors and misconceptions?
– How did we originally teach this concept? What worked? What didn’t work?
– What are the best strategies for addressing the misconceptions?
– What are the best curriculum resources?
– How do you think students will respond to an alternative instructional approach?
As we continue to plan for and deliver interventions for struggling students both during the regular school day as well as before/after school programs, we must be mindful of the fact that giving more of the same is not effective intervention. What didn’t work the first time will most likely not work the second or third time around; there’s a reason why each student struggle and intervention is all about finding out why.
Weekly Highlights:
Ms. Zecca, leading the charge once again in directing our school play, is working tirelessly to teach, model, organize, and support our amazing group of young actors’. It’s a tremendous undertaking to put a play together with professional adults, and I cannot imagine the weight Ms. Zecca carries AFTER a full day of incredible math instruction. Ms. Zecca, I bow to no one but you and Simba.
From Mr. Borelli: This week Mrs. Giampapa, Ms. Beceiro, Mrs. Chin, and Mrs. Foley put a Problem of Practice to the test. The ReadyGENvocabulary portion was not engaging enough for their students to create the link between seeing the word and knowing the word. Working together outside of our Monday PLCs, the 1st grade team, including Mrs. Khatibi and Mrs. Pera, have implemented several methods to move away from the passive “3,2,1” assessment to an active classroom where students are discussing attributes of words like “proud” and “enormous” through the use of small group Circle Maps, visuals, and pushing students to have a rationale for their thinking. Each one of these classes looked different in their approach and in their results due to the authenticity of feedback from students. This was a great demonstration of purposeful planning and the willingness to seek new avenues of learning to bring out the best in our students.
From Ms. Atkins: Mrs. Le Roy invited Ms. Allen’s class into her classroom to share her “African Animal Dioramas”. Mrs. Le Roy shared her “Thin and Thick” question formulation strategy with the visiting class and the teachers then created student groups where host students guided their guests in a question and discussion session.
Mrs. LeRoy and Mrs. Allen teamed-up to incorporate strategies that engage students to learn through purposeful discussion and collaboration. Their teamwork exposed students to diverse perspectives allowing them to learn from various points of views.
From Ms. Mulé: Ms. Merjave is working with class 6-309 to create a content based project in the computer lab. Not only are the students in the class researching Inventions of Ancient Civilizations, they are learning how to put this information together on a PowerPoint presentation. In this lesson students not only acquired information they could apply in the Social Studies class, but added to the foundation of math skills that will prove useful in the coming years.
Things You Need to Know:
Attendance: As a professional courtesy, please try to email me as well as your immediate supervisor when you find out you have to take a sick day. We understand the many things that may prevent you from coming to work, and we want to appropriately plan for your students to learn in your absence. Please try and email us when you call sub-central to give us some time to coordinate coverage. Thank you for your understanding.
Thesis Throwdown Thinking Thursday: I’ve heard through the grapevines that a challenge will be broadcasted to a class Monday morning. Stay tuned!
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