2016 Iowa 1:1 Reflections

Today was a whirl-wind day spent in Des Moines with educators from across the state of Iowa. I spent most of the day at the Iowa 1:1 Conference before heading back to some late afternoon professional learning with the Model Teachers in our district.

According to their website, the focus of the Iowa 1:1 Conference is to:

While the title of the conference suggests it is for 1:1 schools, it is certainly not a requirement.  There are a variety of topics discussed from team and culture-building and ways to evoke creativity and student empowerment to resource and app sharing.  While this was my first 1:1 conference, I certainly hope it isn't my last!  Here's a recap of the sessions I attended!


1.)  Ooh and Aah Moments with Devin Schoening @dschoening
Wow is this guy a dynamic speaker. He is a great story-teller to help make personal connections and is very engaging. He gave supreme examples of Ooh and Aah moments he experiences in classrooms he is a part of as an Instructional Coach in Council Bluffs. He also talked about the characteristics of excitement (connecting, engaging, talent, passion, creativity, being genuine, fun / silliness, building relationships, evoking interest, and finding purpose). He challenged us to reflect on how many of these are in our daily plans. A few (OK - more than a few...) of my favorite take-aways from his session were: 

2.) Beyond the Blue Share Button with Beth Swantz @betswan and Amber Bridge @abridgesmith

There were so many great tips and tricks shared in this session; I can't wait to make time to investigate on my own. It is SO important to provide authentic and timely feedback to students and this session certainly provided resources and ideas for how to do this effectively.  Some of my top favorites included JoeZoo Express, Alice Keeler Drive 20, and Screencastify, all found as add-ons or extensions in Google. They also shared a few "must follows" for GAFE resources - Alice Keeler and Matt Miller .  I am so blessed that these two are part of the rockstar @DLGWAEA team and I have them at my fingertips whenever I might need them!

3.) Social Media 3.0: Developing a Connected Mindset Through Intentional Practice with Dan Butler @DanPButler

I have been following this guy on #IAedChat as a participant for about a year and a half. I now get to work with him each week as we co-moderate #IAedChat together. We use Voxer to plan and communicate about our weekly chats, but it was great to meet Dan in person and get the chance to sit down and listen to him tell his personal story of why using social media to build relationships is what drives him. He's very passionate about his work and that was very apparent today in his session. I'm so fortunate to have the opportunity to work with him on a weekly basis. His passion for making positive connections and building strong relationships makes me want to just be better! If you get a chance, check out this article that speaks of being intentional in your connections.

I also had the great pleasure to host an #i11i session with two of my colleagues - Kim Fisher @Mrs_KFisher and Anna Upah @AnnaUpah. It was titled Share Your Inner Awesome: Using Social Media to Connect with Families and Teachers.  We talked about the What, the Why, and the How to share teachers' and students' inner awesome.  We spoke about our favorite connection platforms of Blogger, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Voxer, Blab, Pinterest, and Google Plus.  While we may use a variety of avenues to connect, it's important to remember that teachers need to use what works for them and for their audience. Teachers need to think about their intended purpose for sharing, who the audience is, and what is being shared.  Don't try to do all of them at once. 

 Our session resources are linked above and the Google Slides are filled with hyperlinks galore.  If you currently live on any of these social media platforms, please, look us up!  We'd love to connect and see how you're sharing your inner awesome with families and stakeholders to strengthen your partnerships!

Hosting a session at a state-wide conference is something I would not have ever thought possible before taking on a leadership role in my district. While I enjoy helping teachers think outside the box in my role as an Instructional Coach, it is certainly a two-way street in my building. I have teachers who also push me to continue to be a learner and step outside my box on a daily basis. I am very thankful for teachers who help me keep my mind fresh and always search for new ideas and passions!

Connecting With Students Through Goal-Setting

The following blogpost highlights Mrs. Kim Fisher (@Mrs_KFisher) and her work with goal-setting and feedback in her kindergarten classroom at Keystone Elementary.  Check out her work at kfkinderland.blogspot.com and follow her classroom happenings at #KFKinders.  Also take a look at the work of other Keystone students and staff at #KeyRocks on Twitter and Instagram.

Throughout my day, I have the great pleasure to work with some fantastic educators.  These teachers are committed to making their students' experiences at school engaging, impactful, and student-driven.  One way teachers at Benton Community are making this happen is with individual and classroom goal-setting conversations with students.  I wrote about our district goal-setting process earlier this year HERE.  Taking it to the next level, many teachers are going beyond the district-provided three-times-per-year conversations.

At the request of our teachers, my colleague Cynda Mehlert (@cmehlert) and I did a professional development earlier this year on Setting Quality Goals, Monitoring, and Providing Effective Feedback at our PK-3 centers.  Included in this learning was research from John Hattie and his work in, Visible Learning.  We outlined the importance of feedback, and that in order to make the greatest impact student achievement, our goal-setting conversations with students have to be constant.  They cannot be goals we make with our students and then let them sit on a shelf for three months before we revisit them.  Students need to take ownership of these goals.  Our teachers took this learning and ran with it!

I would like to highlight how one of Benton Community's teachers is working through a new goal-setting process in her classroom.  I get to see this process as Mrs. Fisher's Instructional Coach, but I also witness the excitement as a parent of a student experiencing this first hand. My son comes home increasingly motivated to tell us about how he and his class are progressing on their goal wall.

The idea surfaced during a coaching cycle conversation Mrs. Fisher and I were having surrounding Characteristics of Effective Instruction.  We were looking for a way to go more in-depth with our coaching relationship, so Kim chose to do a self-assessment surrounding "Assessment for Learning".  We went through the Innovation Configuration Map for this specific Characteristic of Effective Instruction.  It was during her self-evaluation that she found she had some great ideas brewing for long-term goals of how she wanted to align goal-setting and feedback in her kindergarten classroom.  Fast forward a few months, and it is up and running in her classroom.  I'm am so impressed with the determination she has to make this work for her students.  She is up for modifying on the spot and seeing it through to a second year of implementation.

Please let me know if you have any questions as you look through this goal-setting process in Mrs. Fisher's kindergarten classroom!

Student goal-setting wall.  "I Can Statements" are on the top and bottom of the board. 

Each paw represents a student who has met the learning goal.  No names are attached, the class is aiming for 18 paws in each column, one for each student.  

Top Half:  Sent home when goal is set - students meet with Mrs. Fisher weekly to look at potential goal areas.  They brainstorm ways the student can help him/her meet the goal with activities at school and ways to practice at home.  Bottom Half:  Sent home when goal is met! 

Mrs. Fisher meets weekly with students to assess and check to see if they have met the learning goal. 

Bottom Half:  Sent home when a goal is met - the student, teacher, and principal sign the bottom of the goal sheet and it is sent home to parents.  They then set a new goal to work on for the next week.

Mrs. Fisher keeps track of each student's progress on a class Google Sheet. She marks dates of re-assessments and highlights when the goal is met.  

Mrs. Fisher now puts a * when all of the students have met the target.  The class can see how they are doing while also taking ownership in their part of the process.

2nd Annual #BCedCamp is June 23

   

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Teacher Leadership at Benton Community

Benton Community is rounding out its second year of Iowa's Teacher Leadership and Compensation (TLC) implementation.  Over the past few years, our district has gone through a great transition.  Before TLC, our district had teachers from our various buildings take part in our District Leadership Team and help design and carry out professional development.  These teacher leaders were also in the classroom full time.

Since we were awarded the TLC grant and have been fully implemented, we have the opportunity to have five full-release teacher leaders.  Two have dual titles as Curriculum/PD Leader and Instructional Coach.  The other three full-release positions are Instructional Coaches.  We also have the opportunity to have 17 teachers across our four attendance centers act as Model Teachers while still serving as full-time teachers.  We have learned a great deal on our teacher leadership journey, and we continue to modify as our district's needs grow and change. Next year, in year three of implementation, the Model Teacher role will change to a Data Team Facilitator role.  These teacher leaders will take a more active role in our beginning stages of the data team process and collaborate with building Instructional Coaches and administration to help design professional learning to best fit teacher needs.

Our district chose the New Teacher Center to give us a strong foundation in Instructional Coaching throughout our first year.  We attended eight workshops at Grant Wood AEA to grow our knowledge base to understand our new roles and meet teachers' needs.  Throughout our second year, we have taken our Instructional Coaching learning a layer deeper by attending High Impact Instruction training with Jim Knight and Ann Hoffman.   We have also been fortunate to be in the great state of Iowa where we have the opportunity to attend conferences to learn from great educators such as Doug Fisher, Pete Hall, Elena Agular, Steve Ventura, Ken O'Connor, Robert Marzano, and Rick Wormeli.  It was also our pleasure to host Brad Buck, the former Director of the Iowa Department of Education and the Governor of Iowa, Terry Branstad our first year of implementation.   Ryan Wise, current Director of the Iowa Department of Education, has also visited Benton Community on three different occasions for question and answer sessions and to participate in professional learning with our staff.

Last June, we hosted our first ever #BCedCamp focused on Teacher Leadership.  Educators from across the state got together for a day of unconferenced learning.  We created a schedule at the beginning of the day based off of our needs.  You can read more about it here.  We are still looking for feedback whether districts would like us to host a learning similar to this again this summer.

We have found ourselves in discussions with districts new to Teacher Leadership. The following are themes which occur in those conversations.

1.) Be transparent with your staff in the rollout of your Teacher Leadership program.  Ensure the vision of the TLC grant stays at the forefront of decisions.  All stakeholders should have "one voice" when talking about key pieces of the district plan.

2.) Create a system for teachers to share their voice to teacher leaders.  At Benton Community, we do this through surveys to staff every 30 days.  These surveys allow staff to provide us with feedback allowing us to make data based decisions regarding needs of our district.  They also allow us to gauge teacher perception of our interactions.  These surveys also allow us to track participation in collaborative coaching conversations and cycles over time.

3.)  Start with building relationships.  This integral part of the system cannot be overlooked.  Teachers need to be able to trust the coaches and know that they (teachers) are allowed to share conversations, but the Instructional Coach keeps discussions confidential.  This helps a fine line be drawn between the collaborative coaching role and the administration evaluator role.  With a strong foundation of collaboration and trust, on-demand professional learning between teacher and Instructional Coach will help you district meet the needs of students and teachers alike.

Please reach out if you would like copies of any of our documents we have created so far.  I'd also love to hear what is working and what isn't at your district.  Districts should not have to start from ground zero.  We can learn together what works best for teachers in Iowa!

Find me on Twitter -- @TownsleyAJ

BCTLT Smore

Tech Ideas

Looking for a way to infuse more technology into your classroom? Check out the list below and choose ONE to investigate more.  

Kathy Schrock - www.schrockguide.net/ - HUGE collection of resources and ideas!  You can't go on this website and not learn something! 

SAMR Thinglink - SAMR Smash from @hneltner - Click on the ThingLink for more info on these SAMR infusion ideas! 

SAMR ThingLink - from www.appsolutelyapril.com - quick and easy list of how to reach the levels of SAMR in your classroom!

Great list of Free Apps for Educators from Gary Toews to help you get started.  Pick one and go from there! 

Start with the basics - Google Drive Cheat Sheet from www.ShakeUpLearning.com holds Step by step directions on how to learn more about how to organize everything Google Drive!

Instructional Strategy Ideas

Teachers are always looking for something to 'hook' their students.  Here's a short list of my favorite strategies to get high-leverage results.

Classroom strategies -- Reading Rockets gives examples of classroom strategies for phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing

Task Cards or Choice Boards -- give students flexibility to learn independently on their own schedule by allowing them choice of tasks to show proficiency of a concept.

High Yield Literacy Strategies -- great list of strategies and graphic organizers to use for specific skills

Glossary of Instructional Strategies  -- thorough list of terms and strategies

Whip around  -- after instruction, have students quickly go around the room and state a fact or idea.

Pause and reflect -- have students pause every 3-5 minutes to talk with a partner about their learning.

When reading a passage, -- have students create questions, outline the sequence of events, give them a checklist of key points, agree/disagree T chart

Independent connections -- allow students to find connected texts to what you are learning in class

Pause and reteach -- have students pause after learning a big idea and reteach to a partner.

Student modeling -- have a student model the correct way to accomplish a task.

Non-examples -- have a student model a non-example of how to complete a task.

Survey -- have students create a quiz or review for their group members to complete.

Circle retell -- have students sit in a circle and retell a story or sequence of events.

Sporting event -- divide students into 2 teams, put a line down the middle of the board.  Students try to get the ball to move to their side by answering questions to make a goal.

Stump a classmate -- have students craft questions they think will stump their classmates.

Fishbowl -- as students ask great questions throughout a lesson, write them down and review with these questions at the end of learning.

Exit tickets --  I was surprised when...; I think I will...; I would have liked...; Now I understand...; I wish...; I could be more successful if...; I learned that...

Spot the error -- have students write questions or sentences with errors and see if their classmates can spot them.

Keystone Elementary Learning Walk

Teachers learning from one another is one of the most powerful ways to grow as an educator.  Keystone Elementary recently took advantage of an opportunity to get into each other's classrooms to view teaching strategies and classroom management techniques.  We have heard over and over that teachers want to get into other rooms to connect but can't find the time to make it happen. With the prompt of a video from The Teaching Channel called The Learning Walk, we organized the day so teachers were able to visit several classrooms and then have the opportunity to debrief with peers after the observation.  We were fortunate to have a combined planning period that general classroom teachers were able to use, so they did not require substitutes or lesson plans.  Specials teachers and special education teachers needed to be out of their classrooms and prepare substitute plans for 30-40 minutes in order to participate in the learning walks.

Our schedule looked like this:



We scheduled four to five classroom observations for each group of teachers.  We were able to schedule five to six teachers in each group to help the discussions during the debrief be more rich.  The order of observations were carefully timed so the teachers were able to see key pieces of instruction when visiting classrooms.  We stayed in classrooms for three to five minutes and then stepped into the hallway to debrief after the observation about take-aways from the visit.

Teachers were also able to jot down positive feedback for the teachers to be compiled and given to them at a later time.  Another document teachers had to reference for ideas of what to look for is included below.



Additional resources for teachers to look for during observations were included in this great resources from Ms. Houser's Instructional Coaching website.  She has a great number of resources for educators, so if you haven't stalked her website, I highly recommend it!



The final document included in the teacher observation packet was a teacher feedback form.  These were completed by the observing teacher and compiled later to give to each teacher before we left for Christmas break.  The purpose of this feedback was to give teachers an idea of some of the great things they are doing in their classrooms and to reflect on how to make that even better after break.



I would say that our first go with Learning Walks was a success!  We have had great feedback from the teachers who were able to participate, and we are already looking for ways to improve for our next Learning Walk!  Let me know if you have ideas for us, or if you'd like me to send any of our resources your way.