4.12: Grade Level Representatives Report
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Grade level representatives report what they worked on during the academic year and what plans are for the coming year. We hear the first and third grade reports to the AALT. Notice at the end of the 1st grade's report the teacher talks about bringing in samples of student work, analyzing them, deciding what the next step instructionally needs to be, trying it, and "doing that whole dance over and over again." This process is what was illustrated in Sections 1, 2, and 3 with the kindergarten teachers. The principal picks up on this, commenting on the importance of the "Getting Results model…. that cycle that is never-ending." We then hear the 3rd grade report. Notice particularly the "End of Year Summary" form that Bill Saunders had created to facilitated focusing on key aspects of grade level accomplishments and plans. Note: This is a year-round school. Teachers’ comments regarding Tracks A, B, or C refer to their multi-track calendar.
Principal OK, so we'll go ahead a listen to first grade and then we'll go ahead and give them feedback. (To someone off camera) Sandy is .... right there. T Question one about student needs, ... talked about conventions, so we talked about punctuation, word wrapping, spacing, spelling using the word wall and using spelling patterns. A little bit about indentation and writing quote marks. Under communication we talked about vocabulary and we tried to work in some, we tried to work on some ESL themes but really did not get too far with that. And the writers process, writers workshop and general writing was what we focused on greatly... (reading from paper) "What specific instructional strategies and approaches?" All of the above and then the last few months we've had A and C tracks were given instructions by Mia and then A track is training B track, which has been helpful to us all for A track to go back and revisit and also for B track to learn exactly how to do some of the working with words block. (reading) "What did your grade level do this year that helped make your meetings focused and productive?" Everyone really enjoyed and got a lot from Mia's training on the 4 blocks and samples of lessons, trying lessons and then discussing them, doing the demo lessons and watching them, having the videos and having and sticking to an agenda. In discussing our specific expectations with our students we want to develop kid language rubrics, which can be added on to as the year and as the scale level progresses. We're focusing on content while plugging away at conventions. We want to teach color coding editing to the students early during the year and referring it to it often and do the AALT sequence more often, bringing samples, analyzing them, deciding what the next step is, trying it, and doing that whole dance over again. And that's what we are. Principal I like to mention that the Getting Results Model because that's basically what this is all about. And you never can hear too much about analyzing student work, modifying, coming up with strategies, doing the lessons, and coming back, and looking at student work again. That cycle is never-ending. So I like how you threw that in there. T There is a lot more buy-in about that after this year when they can really see that that's what we had done. Principal Third? T Ok, um... (reading) "What specific student needs did your grade level focus on this past year?" We focused a lot on paragraph writing on main idea and supporting details and we did an awful lot work on teaching what a topic sentence is, we had word wall instruction and accompanying activities. The specific instructional strategy and approaches that our grade level used to address the needs were modeling, direct instruction, interactive spelling strategies, word wall, cooperative learning. Specific instructional strategies, approaches that our grade level used in the classroom that successfully addressed the needs was relatively the same as in number 2. We did modeling, direct instruction, and again interactive spelling strategies. We really were very well organized this year because of the AALT meetings and because of bringing up, making the agendas ahead of time. I myself as a grade level chair knew exactly what I wanted to accomplish and it allowed me not to waste time but to make it more productive. And I wrote um that--or WE wrote--that agendas provided were provided ahead of time a, specific guidelines were provided for each meeting. The agendas were relatively were written like a formula in the same way, where for instance when we would look at assess, identify what we did, what weaknesses and strengths we found, how we were going back again and improve the situation and what new assignments we were going to bring up for the next following week and bring back to grade level for the next grade level meeting.