Recent Changes

Lingering Questions
I like Bill's idea of piloting changes. Different groups of teachers could "pilot" different strategies to be able to present the ideas along with the rewards and challenges they encountered. Just because it is in a book doesn't mean that everyone should do everything. There are things that are not in the book that could make a big difference in the lives of our students. There are things that if overdone in the book could have the reverse impact that we are looking for.

FR-4
Merrill did a good job of small group exchanges with Write to Learn last year. I hope we can fit in the ideas from this study in our building PD this year. We need copies of the book in our Merrill professional library.

FR-3
I'm going to fine tune the take home portfolio. In language arts so much evaluation is abstract and inferred. I also plan to explicitly teach how to do a conference and have the students help me make a rubric to assess their effort. I'll share it with my team teacher for a start, because we'll share units and can help each other. I hope the first one will be ready before the official conference date.

FR-2
In the spirit of C3b4ME, when my students do peer writing conferences, I plan for them to document what they worked on and show me their peer sheet before a teacher conference. This may reduce the amount of writers who only write if I babysit.

On final writing projects, we use a four stage checklist and circle the focus, but some students give lip service to revising. By adding peer sign-off and holding the peer accountable for revision, I hope to see more accountability from each writer.

My new language A partner and I already asked for pronged pocket folders on the 6th grade supply list. We plan to use one per unit, and I think they will make take home portfolio conferences more meaningful. I always sent home only the good stuff, and now we'll plan for students to show their growth as well as the polished piece.

FR-1
I've been reading about various state political platforms and wonder what the Texas state legislature, for example, might say about the support for critical thinking found in this book. I had the privilege of frequent contact with a parent who struggled with IB and was considering moving her son. Discussing whether her child might learn best with inquiry or more top down methods was a long process, but in the end, the student stayed, and the parent is a believer.

I really appreciated the anecdote on page 155 about the student who signaled the teacher to change course. With daily formative assessment, it's not just the students who grow. As Wiliams said, teachers can "accept the need to improve practice, not because they are not good enough, but because they can be even better..." IB creates a learning community who understands that learning is a cumulative process.

7-3
Janelle, my eyes glazed over before I got to the end of your standards example. Merrill 6th grade is mulling over when and how to incorporate portfolios for parent conferencing, and I want to send home end of unit portfolios with parent comments showing what their child taught them. The 6th grade team hopes to separate portfolios from report card time. I hope we do portfolios as units end in each class, so parents know what the grade actually means and they aren't inundated with a pile of folders.


One of my kids was assigned to teach me using his science portfolio, and thank goodness the objectives were written in parent-friendly terms! My son clearly learned more than science, because he got to communicate his knowledge to me, and I loved being on the hook to share it back with the teacher. In order for my son to get credit, I had to write what I learned.

7-2:
Brad, as soon as I read your comment about the few we don't easily reach, I was reminded of several of my own. I also remembered Wiliam's comments about the critical balance between learning and ego. We really do need to know our students well in order to help them get that balance. I agree with everyone about incremental learning and scaffolding being powerful tools, especially when the comparison is not an indicator of top to bottom ranking.

7-1
For several units last year we used daily process journals, booklets with sentence starters. I learned right away that students needed explicit instruction for thinking about how they learned and what they could do next. Each day I scanned their journals and used trends from them to make my entry for each class. The next day I read my journal from the previous day, which had tips and insights embedded. By the end of the first unit, students were more adept with naming specific progress and areas of confusion. They helped me structure lessons and set up groups for differentiated practice. Student feedback to me was specific and helpful in guiding instruction. For the final unit reflection, everyone reviewed their own process journal before writing their own summation of learning and marking the IB rubric. I then read their reflection and wrote back to them.

FR-4
As Bill pointed out, there is such a strong connection between what we are working toward as IB schools and the core messages of this book. I think we need to strengthen our practices across the IB network of schools and think about "pilots" in terms of what we might try at a certain grade or subject area across several schools at one time. We've been encouraged by our Board to demonstrate achievement in a different way and they're waiting to see what we are able to bring to the table from an accountability standpoint.