Fourth+Grade+PLC

Riverbend Elementary School Fourth Grade Professional Learning Community

Schedule of joint IST/Fourth Grade PLC meetings 2008-2009: Sept. 26, Oct. 17, Nov. 14, Dec. 12,

PLC & PLC/IST minutes:

Notes from shared fourth grade PLC/IST Meeting

Friday, May 15, 2009 Present: Weaver, Doxey, Badilla, Katasse, Wittig, Renouf, Rinehart Looking at the DRA-2 scores from fall, winter, and spring - looking for growth and comparing it to what we know about the services they received.

Marking the report card - Looks like the district is headed toward using the DRA-2. Amiee was concerned about students who's reading is fine, other than their fluency level. Doxey mentioned that if their oral language pacing matches their oral reading pace, then you could mark meeting core (with a notation of why). Like while, ESL students who have dialect issues can be marked as meeting core (noting what issues need to be worked on). (Sheryl mentioned that we could end up doing both ways - following the protocol and scoring it out that way AND, for students for whom writing is the challenge, following up with the teacher taking dictation, and scoring that out. Then you could look at the discrepancy between the two scores (which could be useful for identifying students who need 504 plans and/or specific training in writing.

Amiee mentioned that she had read a suggestion to make sure we give students a 38 before moving above that level, because 38 NF is the highest level that has a scaffolded summary!

Reflection on the process this year: Renouf - appreciated the discussion about where the kids are. Less talking about what each reading instructor is doing during their intervention time, and more time analyzing student work. PLC was a good time to connect for the three teachers (including Weaver). Backwards design project: was difficult to do - useful but challenging. Sharing materials was excellent. (Loved materials and ideas Amiee shared.

Rinehart - liked it in December when we talked about grouping and assessments. Would like to see us being more consistent in sharing the information - too far between the ones we did.

Weaver - Maybe tweaking our model to allow more time for differentiation. Maybe not all of us meeting together every time - maybe sign up for specialists as needed.

Badilla - would like a data wall where we can visually see how students are progressing. Talked about what kinds of things we would want on a data wall. MRCS uses trifold boards that they can haul in and put away. Should have pictures. Physically moving students card from one group to next is meaningful.

Doxey - If she had more notice about the content, she would be better able to help gather "just right" reading materials. Curriculum mapping would give us more bang for our buck.

Sheryl - Ditto what Weaver said. Would like more customized, flexible groupings for collaboration, based on who needs to be there.

Carmen - maybe once a month have some vertical PLC work, maybe with staff development.

Jan - It was valuable when we did that in the past. Figuring out how she fits in with her new role.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Present: Weaver, Cox, Doxey, Rinehart, Renouf, Badilla, Wittig

Brief discussion about the strong possibility of having the MAPS assessment in the district, beginning next year. Mentioned that some tests with overlapping data might be able to go away if this test is useful.

Karen shared that the DRA pen that they were looking at purchasing for everyone is really only available for primary students, and then it needs to be used with special digitized form.

DRA – Nice window would be April 27-May 15th. We will use the similar model that we did in the spring: students will still come to their interventionists, and those people will do the DRA’s for their students. (Doxey will do Sheryl’s group). Classroom teachers will do the students that are not being pulled for intervention.

Progress-Monitoring:

Deb has been going over and preparing her students for the SBA’s.

Karen’s students have been doing QAR and Chalkbox Kids. Discovered that there was not a link between knowing what kind of a question it is and what to do with that information. Weaver mentioned that statement-based comprehension would be a good bridge that might help.

Doug was prepping his group for the vocabulary on the SBA’s. Average third grade Milestones book – reading at about 95 wpm.

Sheryl debriefed about her Continental Math League group’s progress. Several students did a great job of staying on task, persevering through difficult tasks, working on strategies, etc. Other students did not have that valuable experience. Maybe next time we will have a sampler lesson or trial period before committing to the full unit. She will be starting the Neighborhood unit on Monday (same list as last meeting, however swapping one of the girl guests out, and maybe dropping one of the guest boys).

Brenda was doing Reads Naturally with her group, working on fluency. She gave progress on all her students.

Mini-Scots on a couple kids. One was referred for BASE, but he did not fit their criteria for admission. He has been SCOT’ed, but not since first grade, and the teacher would like some additional suggestions. Deb suggests keeping all the data (student work, antidotal information). If he is SCOTed in the next open meeting, Deb can keep an eye on ensuring he moves through the process. We also think that Lynnette needs to start working with this child.

Friday, March 20, 2009 Jan: Instead of reading being the focus, she will focus on writing and reading (especially with her very newest students). Beginner high & intermediate low are good to group together, if you need to combine levels. She is going to do this 12:20-12:50 M-Th (run both BH (3) & IL (4) at the same time). Mondays (verbs, nouns, etc.) and the other stuff T-Th. Summer scholars – June 22-July 24 session for Fast Forword. Power Readers (with UAS students) writing & reading – June 22 – July 8 New program called Read, Write, Type (where they hear the letter as they type). Camp Invention – June 22 – July 8 Absorbing kids that used to be working with Jan into reading groups: Karen can take a group during fourth grade intervention (12:50 – 1:30). Sheryl: Immediately after SBA’s, the fourth grade will be starting their big project (a Scottish Storyline: Neighborhood), which will go right up to project fair, scheduled for Saturday, May 16th []SBA Testing/Test Prep – both fourth grade teachers are doing practice tests and test prep with their students. Carmen distributed a couple things she downloaded from the DEED website (Writing Skills Checklist and Math Standards Reference Sheet). Next year: Carmen described how she plans to house Doug and Deb in Deb’s current room, and Nick into the blue wing, so all the 4th and 5th and their special ed. teachers will be in the same wing.

Friday, February 20, 2009 Present: Weaver, Renouf, Doxey, Cox, Faure, Rinehart, Badilla, Wittig Agenda: DRA2, Math CML, ESL Testing,

Math Intervention: Sheryl would like to do a CML unit with the fourth graders (instead of once a week for the better part of the school year). See e-mail for the list of 12 students invited to participate. During this time, she plans on teaching half a dozen problem-solving strategies, reading (problems), and administering the five CML quizzes. It will be lighter on homework (one problem per night max, instead of 5 to 7 per week).

ESL Testing: One week of regular testing, the second week is for make-ups - 10:55-11:40 (next week) four days per week (starting Tuesday of next week). Eleven fourth grade students will be tested. Brenda will talk with Kelley to see how they can get her students who are away for testing caught up in social studies.

DRA2: Amiee has been tracking her students on a cool form that came with the DRA2 kit. Also, she would like us to calculate the actual WPM. The question came up about progress monitoring for Tier II and Tier III students. It is the same question that the IST's are struggling with - what tools are available for. Amiee would like work samples, graded work, etc. from the work the students are doing when they are out for intervention (both for the purpose of marking the continuum & report card, and ensuring they are getting everything they need to make sufficient progress. (Sheryl's students work from their last project can be viewed at http://www.jsd.k12.ak.us/~wittigs/akriver/index.html ). For next time: What can we do to improve our fidelity to the DRA2 protocol. Amiee also read the helpful instruction on the bottom of the individual chart page (advanced only if both scores are advanced, independent only if both scores are independent, instructional if either fluency or comprehension drops to instructional). Karen says the district is considering our request to pilot the online software for the DRA2. We looked at the midyear DRA2 assessment data, and regrouped students (Doxey has spreadsheet of who is in which group, e-mailed separately.) Group focuses: Weaver - Reads Naturally (fluency) Badilla - Fluency (at a lower level) SBA Vocabulary - Everyone has a was given a copy of vocabulary terms that show up on the SBA practice test. Everyone should try to embed the terms in their instruction. In addition, teaching the terms in Tier I instruction would benefit everyone.

Friday, January 29, 2009 Online Data Management System – Aimee showed us the DRA2 Online Management System. What we like about it is that the same data is entered once and then can be manipulated. Karen had looked into the cost at the beginning of the year and thought it was prohibitive, but maybe not when you weigh it against the cost of creating and maintaining our own database which does not have the same flexible platform. And the DRA2 teacher data pen is very cool. Karen is going to put together a proposal to ask the district to allow us to pilot the DRA2 Online Management System Site. We will not change intervention groups at this time.
 * We entered DRA2 data from the students for whom we had that data. As we progressed we discussed the idea that perhaps in mid year it is fine and good to use instructional scores in both fluency and comprehension as it will give us good information for informing instruction. We agreed to this. **

Friday, January 16, 2009 Joint training with both the third and fourth grade PLC groups. Present: Badilla, Rinehart, Renouf, Weaver (facilitator), Walker, Jerue, Faure, Storey, Wittig (notetaker) Framework for the training was the goldenrod colored condensed summary created by Doxey (who's up in Anchorage at an NCLB training). Brenda mentioned that the author recommends that if you used fiction text in the fall, then use non-fiction during the next screen. A bit of a discussion about pre/post fidelity is compromised when you test on something different than what you've been providing instruction on in the interim. Reading engagement questionnaire - We need to decide if teachers want to do that whole group, or if we want to do that in our reading groups. We briefly looked at both the 24 level (dictation) and the 28 & above (student completes). Oral Reading - some discussion about inter-rater reliability, especially with expression and phrasing. Either the person who tested them in the fall should retest them or (preferably) we do some inter-rater training (and we do have audio samples of students reading to use). We looked at oral reading guidelines (and markings), which are similar to running records markings.

Make sure students do the prediction section (orally or written, depending upon level) BEFORE they read the rest of the book. Discussion about what to do with young readers who are reading well above grade level, and who's writing skills are at grade level. Because their writing level doesn't match their reading level, how do we capture their true comprehension level? The working solution for now is to have them do the written work as per protocol, go back and ask them orally and take dictation in the margin, so we can look at both scores. Discussion about which book to have a student read. Our suggestion is to use fewer book choices, otherwise when you go back to score the comprehension section you will need to read every book in the whole kit! Yikes! However, you will need to look and see which books they were tested on in the fall. Try to avoid those books if at all possible (so all reads are novel to the students). We did some inter-rater work, looking at a couple fourth graders fall packets from the book Storm Chasers, but we only go through prediction.

Brenda says it says in the instructions not to test more than one grade level above their assigned grade placement.

So, now we are waiting for the kits to arrive. Third grade: We will keep our intervention groups, have them do quiet work, and do our own assessments. Fourth grade: Kelley would like to do her reading group. Aimee doesn't mind doing the fluency only if we do some inter-rater reliability of the expression and phrasing. Right after school on Tuesday the IST and the fourth grade teachers will meet to do that inter-rater work.

Fourth Grade PLC/IST meeting

Friday, 12 December 2008

Present: Faure (Gopher), Weaver (Norm watcher), Badilla (Timekeeper), Wittig (notetaking), Doxey (Facilitator), Cox, Rinehart, Renouf

Guests: Haifa Sadighi, Kimberley Homme, John Paden (DEED)

Introductions: Haifa explained why she was here (following up from the audits that just finished up).

Agenda: using the revised (fleshed out) agenda Karen sent out this morning.

Looked at the agenda from fourth grade intervention groups. 


 * Weaver’s Group – fluency – goal 110 to 120 wpm consistently – then move them up .5 grade level. Using Read Naturally.

Data points were once a week. Brenda is moving up to two reads per week. Kids are graphing their own progress.

Doug’s Group - put his student’s DRA2 scores on a matrix. (Shows matrix to group). Group still working on word attack. Did Nancy Norman assessments (unfamiliar words that follow phonics rules). Instruction: Nancy Norman cards (w/ picture associations, then covered pictures, developed word families, wrote sentences for the words they made). Doug sent the words to Aimee, in hopes of them using them as spelling words. Also did tile work in the back of some book Karen gave out. Next time, want to move into interpretation and summarizing.

Do fourth grade teachers have the desk charts? Aimee has gone through all the cards except the purple cards with her whole class. It’s on the disk Karen sent, but Karen has a color printer, which would make much more meaningful copies for classroom use (and she volunteered to print them out).

Deb: Doing similar work as Doug, but at a lower level. Added the letter assessment, since one of them was working on that. Started group out on short sounds.

When they started they all had their short vowels. Have not rechecked on the Dulch. Did benchmark tests. Will use same benchmarks after winter break – to see whether extended school year is appropriate. We will look forward to see that data and compare it to the mid-year DRA2 assessments. Aimee would like an extra set of the assessment.

Jan – Magic Treehouse series. Mary found out they weren’t independently reading, so she pulled them back as a group. Did RR on group.

Interpretation, and were low (initially)

Book was 2.75 for the first book 3.76 for the second book (readability)

Sheryl is doing the Alaska River Virtual Tour with her group (after doing Junior Great Books for a while).

Discussion about the following students with issues:

Next time: DRA2 assessment kits should be here first thing in January. Everyone will DRA2 their own reading groups, and send in the information a couple days before our next meeting so we have time to put it in one common database and make useful charts and graphs to look at our next shared meeting.

Informational information:

From reads naturally, got a book “Reading Fluency – Progress Monitor”

Universal screening for ALL students. Karen is ordering a kit for each classroom teacher in the building. She is looking for a time to teach the fourth grade. Amiee asked if Brenda knows how to administer the DRA2 – she does, and will teach the fourth grade teachers how to administer.

Backwards Design- decided on Alaska History – next unit – present in March.

Reflection:

Valuable to see formative assessments, and would like to have access to more of them. Lots of numbers floating around. Would like them visually or packaged somehow.

Likes to know that we are doing the Nancy Norman materials. Did assessment with her class at the beginning of the year as well. Having something similar was nice.

Would like a training on how to use the Nancy Norman walll.

Liked that classroom teacher checked in with specialist at report card time, with clear, common expectations.

Very excited about the NN materials, happy with the process.

Lots of numbers- it would be good to have it on the screen. Mentioned that it would be good to e-mail the classroom teachers weekly with what we are working on. Still working on the graphing thing.

Didn’t like that we were scurring around because big wigs were coming in to observe.

Data points were for fluency. If you bring in other data point for other skills, what do we do with it?

Concerned that IST members are trained on RTI formative assessment, but the other interventionists haven’t, so how do we get them up to speed with the data we need to look at each time. Would have liked data presented visually.

Liked that we had good data on the table. Would like us to capture the resources that we are using.


 * November 14, 2008**

Notes from Fourth Grade PLC/IST shared meeting

Present: Rinehart, Renouf, Cox, Doxey, Weaver, Badilla, Wittig, Katasse

Agenda: Fourth Grade: • Check in with everyone - What are each of the intervention groups doing, and who is in each group. • Keeping the same intervention groups through the next cycle. • General, quick preview of upcoming goals & objectives (which will help the rest of us embed these concepts in interventions, when appropriate). • Help fourth grade teachers develop upcoming units. Plus: • Questions

Notes:

Questions: How do the DRA2 scores match up with other reading assessments, the District core, etc.? Amy did some research and was able to find some correlations; she will e-mail us the URL of the website she found that had some useful information. She also noticed that the higher and lower performing students had similar scores on the DRA2 and DRP scores. Some of the kids in the middle were more inconsistent between the two tests.

Discussion about when to provide the third dip for the students who’s IEP calls for such: Renouf mentioned the writing time would be the ideal time. Both special ed. teachers are teaching third grade math groups at that time (10:40) During this writing block, Brenda is taking the mid- to high-performing students, and the classroom teachers have smaller groups for more intensive feedback. All three groups are working through the same assignments. It seems to be working for most of them. Karen is looking at juggling her schedule to make herself available at that time to also instruct during that time. The cultural specialist is coming in for 15-20 minutes during that time.

Discussion of what to do with the student at Level 14, who is currently working with Deb, but she already has a huge spread in her reading group. Brenda said she could take him (must be the level of kids she is already working with). Kelly said he is a creature of habit, and the transition might mess with the success he is already having.

Doug would like to pull 20 minutes during the 3:00-3:40 block two or three days a week (during social studies) to work with some identified students (2 in one class, 3 in the other?). Question about how we are monitoring progress for these third dip students according to the RTI protocol.

What if we moved social studies to the morning, and writing to the afternoon? That would work well with the special ed. teachers, since they could do writing (2:45-3:45). That also works well for Doxey. Everyone agreed to flip flop their schedules to make this work. This will start on Monday.

Materials – Carmen says there is materials money in Title One. We could consider looking at the science and social studies curriculum to see what needs to be supplemented. In the past, Nina and Amiee staggered their instruction, so they survived with just one classes worth of materials. Now that both fourth grade classes are paced together, more materials are needed. It appears there is more materials available for science than social studies.

Social Studies: Some materials that were mentioned: National Geographic (the ones we recently received) Rand McNally (comparison of NW native groups??)

Sheryl was excited to learn that the Alaska Government section is less covered, so she could do work with the EL kids.

Web materials: SeaAlaska has some presence. UAF has some Alaska Studies and cultural studies materials. We don’t know much about materials that are written for elementary school level kids. (Sheryl would like to research/develop something along these lines).

Science: Karen mentioned that we have sets of 6 or 12 that matches the new fourth grade science curriculum, but not quantities that would work with kids.

General Independent Reading Materials: Concerns – Looking for materials at level 20 or lower. Amiee has 40 and above or has access through the library. What we are looking for is high interest, low vocab books that are not cheesy. Check out Don Johnson (not the Miami Vice guy). Kelly has a bin of non-fiction books, but needs more with variety. Amiee wants series of books. Karen said the non-fiction she could order right away, since it’s easier to find non-cheesy non-fiction.

Right now: Alaska regional studies. Finishing SE Alaska. Looking at text features in SS textbook. Culture groups – looking for similarities between groups (weather, land forms, etc.). Compare and contrast. Three heterogeneous groups. Kelly is doing Arctic, Interior-Brenda, Amiee – the West. At the moment, no one is doing South Central. Probably stick with this to winter break. Discussion about how and when the three groups will share their work (symposium, museum, something like that?).

Math: Working on multiplication (Unit three). Finished area and perimeter (not that all of them mastered it), reviewing time and clock reading (needs work).

Next UbD unit – chewing over that. Might have an idea next time we meet.


 * Oct. 17, 2008**

Attendees: Faure, Wittig, Badilla, Katasse, Doxey, Rinehart, Renouf, Weaver

Agenda

1. Roles of IST mtg. 2. Review 4th grade DRA2 data. 3. Brief explanation of the 3 Tier model. Review DRA2 handwritten handout developed by Doxey. Looking at reading levels and deficit areas.

Aimee has students get practice reading aloud and do individual conferences with classroom teacher. Choral reading on water to address phrasing. Provide corrective feedback.

Phrasing Resources: Books on tape, tape players (can bring home), Reads Naturally (not the best, better for addressing rate)

How will fluency be monitored? Suggested using the DRA2 continuum in Oral Fluency to measure Tier I students’ progress in January and at the end of the year.

Determine Tier I and Tier II interventions. What resources are available to address deficit areas.

Tier II Interventions (with Doxey).

Intervention Blocks

Brenda would work with kids on the cusp on levels 28s, 30s.

Aimee is fine with 28 and up Kelly x Fast Forward

Two teacher teams of Tier II Option 1

and two teacher teams of Tier III

Tier II Deb, Doug, Jan level 28 and down. 3 students in Fast Forward

Rinehart, Renouf, Weaver

Tier II Doug, Deb, Jan, Brenda 30 and down

Fast Forward starts on Monday.

Meet on Monday to discuss 4th grade intervention groups 8:45 am.

IST Planning meeting will be next Wednesday.

Present: Doxey - facilitator, Faure - timekeeper & gopher, Wittig- notetaker, Badilla - norm watcher & parking lot attendant, fourth grade teachers: Renouf & Rinehart, Principal - Katasse (drop in)
 * September 26, 2008 PLC/IST Meeting**

Goals for today: Go over the things the DRA2 is assessing, particularly the comprehension section. (Many parts of the DRA connect with the continuum). District is expecting the continuum, particularly the bullets, to drive instruction). IST's job is to help with that.

(Note: make sure all teachers have continuum and understand it).

Karen talked about the Reading Engagement section, and the option of who would score them out. One of the teachers said she has been looking at a lot of similar assessment tools, hasn't found the one she wants to use yet, but doesn't really like the DRA2 Reading Engagement.

Clarification that the DRA2 assessment is to determine the INDEPENDENT level. Discussion about how we determine which book level to start at. We looked at their DRA, BRI, SBA, and core markings, ask students how much and what they read over the summer, and make our best guess from there.

A brief discussion about the prediction section. One of the RAT members followed the protocol for reading levels above 24, and had the students complete the prediction section in their own writing. The others did the writing for them (at the higher levels)

We got through the whole page of inter-rater reliabilty, which took up most of the session.

Whole group was much more comfortable with having two people scoring, rather than just one. Renouf would like to be one of the reader for all the students in her class. Brenda and Aimee will do the first scoring of Rinehart's class. The IST will divvy up the rest of the papers for the second read.

Doxey will send an e-mail with url to cloze practice (since teachers mentioned that students need to be taught this skill before DRP assessments