5.18: Guidelines to Present the Data
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Bill provides some guidelines to present the data to the faculty ("I would draw their attention to the K-5 pattern"). One teacher then asks Bill for suggestions for how to share results with the grade levels during "common planning time," which is when teachers get together as grade levels to discuss common curriculum and instruction issues. Bill makes several very concrete recommendations.
Bill The first thing is just to familiarize them with what we have here, just as I did this morning. This is the table with the numbers; this is the conversion to the percentage. And then explain to them how this bar operates. And then, I would leave it either to grade level to common planning time or to individuals to look at the grade by grade results, and I would just draw their attention to the K-5 pattern. And there are two things that I would do; one is you got a nice pattern of increases like, 3's and 4's and increases in 2s and it actually, you see it in every graph, you see that? T But not there T No Bill There's a little different here (laughter); that's the one exception. And so you can clearly make the point that we seem to be making progress. Now we always know that kids are going to make progress, you know what I mean? And if teachers are really on it, kids are going to make progress, so once they see the slope of the line, then you can turn your attention to the last bar because that is the bottom line. Let's look at what we stand at the end of this year. As an example, we had 50% of our kids in communication who are at level 3 or better in other words meeting the grade level standard and a total of 82 percent that were partially meeting or better, OK? So we still have a fair amount of work to do, you guys, to get everybody performing at or close to grade level, but we're definitely getting there. T Like when we go back to common planning [with] these results, we can give them all out at staff meeting people aren't really going to have time to mull over and think about it. So then you back to common planning. And in the meeting, is it advised to have like a summary that you can present, analyzing the results for your grade level? Bill Well, two ways to go. If you have a common planning, you know what I mean? If you have a common planning in which you can share these results, I think one possibility is to sort of do what we did and try to come up with a group summary: What did we find for communication, for conventions, you know what I mean? Just have a chart with a little space "what do we know?" And what's been really helpful that chart that started I think in second grade what gains do we see and to what do we attribute it? What lack of gains did we see and what do we have to do next year? T (?) Bill You know, plus minus and then to what do we attribute it? Drawing those attributions really important. T .... Do some long term planning on your agenda is based on that? Bill Well, it made just kick off the kinds of things that will start up in July. OK?