Common Formative Assessment Book Study Chapter 6
Chapter 6 - The Big Picture -- Pacing Guides and Unit Design
Pacing guides and the backward planning model have proven to be highly effective when designing units. How does your PLC plan for intervention?
Last year while I was in SPED I looked at several different factors to decide on an intervention plan for students. I looked at previous year STAAR scores (did they pass or fail), istation levels (what tier) and their district CBA scores(pass or fail and how close).
ReplyDeleteLooking at the backward planning guide, Step one is a step I don't agree with. We learned during our Kilgore Training that is is important for students to be taught the standards word for word NOT "translated theses standard into student-friendly language". Students must know what it means if a standard says generate, compare, contrast, identify, construct. Instead of translating the standard before introducing it, we introduce the state standard as it is written and allow students to put it in there our words.
ReplyDeleteStep two Unwrapping the Standard is something with have spent a lot of PLC time on. We could spent more time practicing academic language and vocabulary.
Step three Is to Identify Acceptable Evidence. We have almost perfected our Summative assessment, thou any assessment could use a little tweaking. I believe this year we should focus more on implementing more Formative assessments.
Step four is create a sequential plan for Unit Design. The district has done a wonderful job of providing a basic outline of which teks to teach, at which time and in what order. We always spend beginning of our PLC looking at this plan and deciding how it will work in own classroom.
Any interventions we plan are normally after our summative assessment, but as we plan more formative assessment our interventions will be based on those results as well.
Last year, our PLC primarily used the previous year's STAAR scores, but also current performance, to split our students up into three homogenous groups. 3 class periods per week, we each intervened and/or extended the student's knowledge of a certain SE. We "kept the end in mind" by revisiting the TEKS on which they scored lowest on their CBAs.
ReplyDelete"Pacing guides and the backward planning model have proven to be highly effective when designing units. How does your PLC plan for intervention?"
ReplyDeleteOccasionally, we would have the forethought to include intervention days in our unit plans. After assessment and classroom data analysis, students would receive additional instruction and assignments as well as reassessment. When performance dictated, additional tutorial time was assigned and/or elective pull-outs were used.
Though we discussed borrowing the rotation strategy used by the Math department, we didn't get the opportunity before STAAR testing. This year, we do hope to utilize some team teaching to better facilitate enrichment and extension.
I think a good name for special education teacher is interventionist. In my PLC we recognize that LD learners outside of the LRE experience don’t always lend themselves to LRE intervention materials/procedures; I’ll discuss just one simple way the restricted environment intervenes:
ReplyDeleteWarm-ups are designed specifically for those in need of intervention and are a past targeted standard designed specifically for the identified formative learner(s). Sure, my summative learners are beyond the warm-up but looping standards are good too. I engage the formative learners openly reviewing their constructed responses and specifically identify their error before the entire class. Often times posters (and this is key in my class because as this poster begins to conceptualize them it then becomes an easy jump to the supplemental aid and if you’ve watched a student assess with the aid you’ll find they hardly ever refer to it; because they know it) are referred to which support vocabulary, algorithms, definitions, symbols and other useful interventions that have been modified throughout the years to accommodate many fallacies these learners have introduced me to throughout the years. All along the way the summative learners are reinforcing the plan to solve stating, “that’s what I did and did you see this word and that’s how I knew what to do and did you see this symbol that means this,” peer engagement is a strong motivator. Motivational strategies through incentives are employed to insure quality efforts. The next day many attributes of the same standard will be present but appear different than the previous day forcing the learner to use the recognition skills from the previous day and employ the solving plan for the solution in the same but new problem until all are successful.
Interventions occur throughout the day in every aspect of class, see blog post question number two.
I agree, Harold. I see warm-ups in the same way. They're such a good way to hit something important in a succinct manner. They're also a way to continually reinforce TEKS.
DeleteI also love the "ticket out the door" as a formative measure. It's not only a great way to make sure they get the work done, but also a credible way to judge how well they're doing on a topic.
The ELA PLCs rely on: previous STAAR scores, CBAs and TMSFA fluency results.
ReplyDeleteAs a result of RTI becoming the theme/focus of the upcoming school year, PLCs will have even more assessments and ways to plan for and implement intervention.
Pacing Guides are basically our Scope and Sequence. We've done work similar to Backward Planning, but not to this extent. Goals are established for categories based off the previous year STAAR scores. We discuss vocabulary and different types of assessments that will allow students to reach the set goal. Intervention involves discussing data, re-teaching for the class if needed and/or scheduling tutorials for needed students.
ReplyDeleteOur PLC uses a variety of strategies when planning for intervention. We know there are always going to be some students that are lower than the others. We have to always be prepared to adjust and re teach a previously learned concept of the students are missing the point that this standards builds on. We uses STAAR scores to help see what level the students are at. Also we use previous tests and assessment scores to help the students. When it came to reviewing for STAAR we looked at previous test and practice STAAR tests and focused on the standards that the students were weak in. In some standards the rally coach or sage and scribe is really effective in providing assistance to the struggling students. In other situations, grouping the students by skill is more helpful and benefice to the students.
ReplyDeleteIntervention consisted of re-teaching, tutorials, collaborating with other teachers who taught the same subject I did at the other middle schools (Spanish in this case since I was not in a PLC). We looked at our scope and sequence and made adjustments. Patience and Persistence were also main ingredients to make students successful.
ReplyDeleteSS has implemented pacing guided for several years, which serves as an excellent guide throughout the year. The one area we need additional work would be identifying the power standards; those on which we target instruction. Planning for intervention occurred for the past several years in the 8th grade department, but has not yet happened for the sixth grade. Also, we need to develop the type of accepted evidence to uniformly use.
ReplyDeleteDue to the pacing guides established by the district, it was difficult to allow time for intervention after every topic and/or unit. Creating tests before teaching the topic really helped us stay on track. We used the most-missed questions from the previous unit as one part of the process, but we need to focus more on this in the future.
ReplyDeleteThe Social Studies department has pacing guides already in place. We have had to adjust them due to changes in TEKS and determining which standards have the most importance. However in our PLC, we are still working on our plans for intervention.
ReplyDeleteWhen planning our instruction, we sometimes planned a day to re-teach standards where students performed low before giving them a re-test. We also looked at the assessment to determine if any modifications needed to be made, such as wording in questions that was confusing, etc. We also planned for intervention during tutorials. I believe we could do a much better job of this than last year. I like the idea of using formative assessments to plan for regular intervention to help students increase levels of mastery of the standard before taking a formative assessment.
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ReplyDeleteOne excellent point made by the authors in this chapter is that if a student is moved on before he or she has learned essential information, an educational gap is created and the student is set up to fail at future learning (p. 64)- proof of the need for effective intervention. I also like the idea of having a day planned for enrichment or remediation (p. 66); intervention taking place in the immediacy of regular, short-term formative assessments should lessen the need for more intense and longer-term interventions later. This is something we’ve attempted in the past during after-school or before-school tutorials, and something at which we will increase our efforts this year in terms of consistency.
ReplyDeleteThis chapter and the comments I’ve read in response to the question remind me of something I heard at a co-teaching conference I attended this summer: If appropriate execution of teaching is taking place at the point of learning (that is, when the lesson is taught and practiced), less remediation and intervention need to take place after the lesson has been taught. The comment was made in response to a question regarding differentiation and co-teaching, but I think it applies here, as well.
I agree Mr. Holland. The key is "appropriate execution of teaching". Small group instruction should be a part of differentiating your lessons.
DeleteWe try to plan in an intervention/extension day for students when we see that they are not understanding topics or did not do well on their assessment, have before and after school tutorials, stations, and try to collaborate as a team other ways for intervention.
ReplyDelete6. We planned for intervention based on the data we collected through the formative and summative assessments. Often we would reteach and include the learning target in future assessments. For this year I would like to explore different strategies for implementing intervention more effectively.
ReplyDeletePacing guidelines are something science has worked on for some time. 8th grade science creates a district wide calendar that “builds in time for differentiation and corrective instruction”. This allows us to revisit concepts that the assessments show need work.
ReplyDeleteThe SS department has pacing guides in the form of units for each six weeks. Interventions and vocabulary are two goals our PLC is working on this year.
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