Caught Up in the Day-to-Day…
by Jonathan VanderEls • • 0 Comments
Wow! I can’t believe how much they’ve grown in just a few months! As parents, we’ve often heard this phrase when someone sees our children after a span of time. We all tend to not notice the incremental changes our own children experience as they grow. Working in a school for multiple years can be somewhat similar. Because we are imbedded in the ongoing work of educating, the small, incremental growth that occurs on a day-by-day basis within a school can escape the eye.
I was explaining at a recent conference presentation that this became very apparent to me during a vertical team meeting that took place at our school near the end of the school year. I had asked our team leaders to lead a discussion related to our spring writing assessment analysis in vertical teams. Our school uses a visual we call “The Wall” (www.competencyworks.org/2014/03/another-brick-in-the-wall/) to analyze writing across grade levels through the lens of a continuum. We have done this now for three years.
Our team leaders’ charge was to guide the discussion of the group using four questions as their structure:
1.) What are your observations related to writing across all grade levels?
2.) What were areas of strength from your grade level writing.
3.) What is your grade level’s plan to assist students in realizing growth in their writing based upon the results of this assessment.
4.) What do you notice in relation to writing at this same point in time last year (specific to % of students in each level)?
2.) What were areas of strength from your grade level writing.
3.) What is your grade level’s plan to assist students in realizing growth in their writing based upon the results of this assessment.
4.) What do you notice in relation to writing at this same point in time last year (specific to % of students in each level)?
The conversations were natural and free-flowing, but during the course of one team’s discussion, the upper elementary Connected Principals | Sharing. Learning. Leading.: