This year’s PTA Reflections topic proved to be a bit of a challenge for Laura, and as she began brainstorming about the different ways she could “make a difference”, a familiar brand of dread began to wash over me. Parents and teachers know this feeling all too well. I call it the “I’ve been standing on my feet talking and thinking all day and I really don’t want to patiently coach you through your own thought process right now thankyouverymuch” feeling. But I did. I poured myself a nice tall glass of caffeine, and we sat down to brainstorm.

“How can you make a difference, Laura? Let’s start there,” I said.

“I know! I can recycle!”

I smiled. Of course she could.

“Or, maybe I could go door to door and raise money for cancer research,” she suggested.

Um………no.

“What if I picked up litter?” she asked quietly, peering out the window while I contemplated adding something from our liquor cabinet to my glass. She was at a loss.

I tried a different approach.

“Laura, when you think back over the last few years of your life, were there any experiences that really stood out as challenges to you?” I asked, tilting my head and looking hard at her. I knew what she was going to say.

“Grandma and Grandpa died.” And suddenly, she began to really think about the birthplace of service. We give because someone has given to us, often. And we serve because we remember how, at one time, we were in need of service ourselves.

Three years ago this January, my otherwise healthy father-in-law was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, and within five months of his diagnosis, he was gone. Laura is one of seventeen grandchildren in the Stockman family. My husband is the youngest of seven. Watching my brothers and sisters-in-law attend to their father, witness his death, and go through the motions of planning a funeral was absolutely the most heartbreaking and inspiring thing I have ever experienced.

One month later, when my mother-in-law passed away suddenly, I came to appreciate the fact that there are things people should never feel well-practiced at. Planning a funeral is one of them. Grief is another. Watching my daughter lose both of these people within the space of one summer was quite a bit to bear. There was nothing that I could do to help her make sense of this or feel better.

Time heals all wounds, though, and we’ve all recovered rather well from that awful summer. Laura still sleeps with her Grandpa’s picture next to her bed each night, and at least once a week, when I tuck her in, she will mention how much she misses him. She misses her Grandmother too. But Al was her favorite grandparent, hands-down. He was larger than life in that little girl’s eyes. And in death, ironically, he looms even larger in her mind.

Asking children to write about things that really matter to them is, in my opinion, the single most important thing that we can be doing as educators. We’ve been fortunate in that our girls have always been provided tremendous choice as learners. Their teachers, for the most part, have always encouraged them to choose their own writing topics, to select their own books…to engage in a workshop model where they have been allowed to thrive. I’m pretty vocal about the fact that I have loved the teachers my children have had. But I know that my experience is the exception, not the rule. Particularly when it comes to using technology.

Laura began her blog rather spontaneously. She decided that she could make a difference by living the example her grandfather set for her…by doing “small things with great love” as her Aunt Barb so aptly reminded us. And she wanted to blog about it. Because she loves to blog. Truth be told, I don’t particularly love her blogging (especially this week, actually–because the kid TYPES SLOWER THAN MUD). But I appreciate her enthusiasm, and I know that if she’s going to learn how to use the net safely, I am going to have to play a role in making that happen.

I did not expect to be speaking to PR people, proofreading press releases, granting phone interviews or sending thank you messages for matching fund offers. This is not what I anticipated when Laura said, “Hey, I’ve got a great idea! Let’s start a blog!”

In the last four days, I have marvelled over the fact that Laura is able to visibly trace the ripple effect that she so desperately wanted to create. And the more momentum she creates, the more people want in. Everyone likes a few extra hits on their own blogs. It’s a win-win situation that we are happy to be a part of. I am stunned by the traffic that is moving through her site, and I am humbled by the fact that not a single comment or email we have received has been inappropriate in any way. As a mom, I am excited for her…but I can’t help standing back and observing, as a teacher, exactly how the internet has provided her a voice, reinforced the good, and driven a REAL audience to her work…that she cares VERY MUCH about impressing appropriately as a writer.

It doesn’t get any more engaging or authentic than this.

And here’s something that I know. I know that a good majority of the passages on the New York State English Language Arts Assessments have actually been pieces of electronic text. Mock ups of web pages and Wikipedia entries and emails and ….blogs.

I like getting MY kid “ready for the test” THIS way.

Yes, I really do.

We are so OVER the practice test. How about using a blog as a formative assessment? I know it can be done, and I can’t wait to start seeing that happen. We educate in exciting times.

So, back to the start: I’m doing Laura’s challenge too. I’ll be doing one good deed a day, anonymously and quietly, for twenty five different teachers I know in the region. I haven’t decided who they will be yet….but I have a lot of great teachers to choose from.

The group was small–there were seven teachers, total. And they were a diverse group: music teachers, speech pathologists, special education teachers, and high school teachers from a couple of different content areas. The discussion was interesting, and I learned a lot.

Something that I noticed, though: they latched on to the activities and strategies that I shared with them right away: games, ice breakers, reciprocal teaching structures, active participation strategies…all of the fun stuff that helps to build community within a classroom or within teams. But, they weren’t so crazy about the emphasis I was placing on planning for a successful year, truly engaging with their kids, and using a lot of specific praise.

Some of them explained that despite their great efforts during their first year on the job, implementing CL resulted in chaos. Inequity. Frustration all around. And I remember feeling this way as well.

We spent the afternoon trying to go at the planning proactively. I shared the situation that I found myself in as a teacher with mammoth class sizes, inclusion students, and very short class periods. And I gave them some tips that worked for me when I was struggling with the same issues. Tips “beyond the binder”…nothing really fancy…just simple things that I did to rectify my own issues implementing CL over the course of the very quick decade I spent in the classroom. I didn’t think it very binder-worthy, truth be told.

They loved it. They ate it up, made it their own….left with a plan. It honestly left me with a bunch of mixed feelings. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy that they were happy–and planning to take some serious steps toward implementing Cooperative Learning. But it was quite perplexing to realize that despite the fancy binder and the awesome resources and the wasted anxiety about the agenda, what mattered most to these teachers was my willingness to admit that it wasn’t all sunshine and flowers, that I too couldn’t bear giving group grades, that I needed to do a lot of modeling before my kids truly understood what a “six inch voice” was, what a “valid contribution” looked like, and what “smooth group transitions” really required. And that there were good, solid ways to measure–to assess–CL skills and hold kids accountable for improving their performance.

That conversation made up the better part of yesterday’s “staff development”…for all of us. It was really just a conversation….and I wasn’t leading it….I was just contributing. I wish every day could be like that.

Digging into this issue quickly leads most teachers to the realization that there are “too many words” in their content area, and many teachers struggle to define which words students should be held accountable for learning…..and how teaching and learning words might vary, depending on how the word might be used by students long-term.

I’ve spent the last year learning as much as I can about vocabulary instruction, and like so many others, I still often feel like I am swimming in a vast ocean of information that we’ve only begun to dip a toe into. Much of what I share with teachers comes from Robert Marzano’s work, but I found Janet Allen’s book, Words, Words, Words  to be helpful as well, in that it provides solid information about tiering words, a process that enables teachers to begin “categorizing” the many words that their students confront in a given year. Once this task is accomplished, decisions can be made about how to best instruct and assess around the words. Allen provides important strategies for practicing and assessing vocabulary that move beyond defining words and using them in sentences (which, apparently, some studies have shown causes regression in vocabulary development over time).

Many of the teachers that I worked with last year revamped their instructional practices and have begun incorporating the use of word walls, performance-based assessments, and considerations for learning styles. Several districts have developed grade-level formative assessments that will be used to study vocabulary development over the course of the year, using writing samples and rubrics that are very similar to the 6+1 Traits rubrics that so many of us are familiar with.

I am eager to see how these assessments work for teachers…specifically, whether or not they provide them with the information that they are hoping to gather.

I am also eager to hear from others who might be focusing on vocabulary instruction and assessment………it seems to be a solid place to begin helping students maximize their learning potential.

Supposing that teachers have already deconstructed historical state assessment data, teachers might begin by revisiting those performance indicators that were aligned to items that students struggled with over time. Coming to understand what the performance indicator truly means is an important and often overlooked first step. Discovering what the items aligned to it challenged students to do can help teachers better understand how to respond instructionally.

For instance, many states have adopted standards or subskills or performance indicators or whatever it is your state is calling it that articulate the need for students to use graphic organizers. As a teacher, my interpretation of that skill would inspire me to begin using many graphic organizers in the classroom and to train my students to use them effectively. However, when you revisit some of the state assessment items mapped to this skill area, interesting realizations are made. For instance, students are sometimes presented with a passage and a question to respond to. They are asked to represent their response by using a graphic organizer. The challenge? The organizer itself is already partially complete. So in this case, using graphic organizers isn’t as simple as the PI would lead you to believe. In this case, using graphic organizers also includes inferring the thought process that is already partially played out in the test booklet before them. In this way, using graphic organizers becomes a highly critical task….it becomes very much like a mathematical process.

When teachers are provided the time and the guidance that is needed to begin having meaningful conversations about assessment data, powerful discoveries are made. And when they are given the time and the guidance needed to revisit items that have been an issue historically, what is uncovered is that much more significant.

Working through these processes collaboratively allows teachers to begin targeting skills in a much more specific and strategic manner. Constructing classroom assessments around these well-targeted areas of provides teachers with the kind of data that leads to significant change.

Processes like this provide teachers with the tools that they need to be real “architects of change”…and I love being a part of that kind of work.

I know how I felt.

And I know how a few hundred teachers in Erie County felt as well.

Just a teensy bit overwhelmed. And kind of in need of a drink. Despite any happy rumors we heard, the new Core was not more specific, and it was certainly not easier to understand. Most perplexing was the realization that performance indicators DID seem to spiral across grade levels, but the way in which the curriculum was articulated made it very difficult to see where the indicators were first introduced, where they were expected to be mastered, and where new and more rigorous indicators made their first appearance.

And none of them were numbered! Staff developers and curriculum coordinators…can I get a collect groan please? If anyone out there is mapping against this curriculum, you know the pain I speak of.

Faced with the task of understanding and helping teachers to appreciate this daunting new curriculum, I did the only thing I knew how to do at that moment in time: I made lemonade out of a whole lot of lemons. I placed the Core curriculum into a new framework. I didn’t change a thing….other than how it looks. And my work clearly demonstrates where performance indicators are first introduced, where they need to be mastered, and how they evolve (or dissolve) across grade levels. You can see the scope and sequence. You can witness the spiral, despite how broken it may appear to be. I’m in the process of renumbering the indicators, so that they are consistent with the coding used by TechPaths.

I’m happy to share, too. Just go here….and drag and drop the files to your computer.

Angela Stockman

The History of the Project

The call for the creation of a deeply aligned, regional English Language Arts curriculum came from various members of the Erie 1 BOCES Instructional Development Advisory Board. This board is compromised of district-level administrators who oversee the development of local curricula and Associate Superintendents for Instruction from across the region. The process itself was conceptualized by Fenwick English and Betty Steffy and illustrated in their book Deep Curriculum Alignment (Scarecrow Education Press, 2001). During the fall of 2005, members of the Instructional Development Advisory Board worked with Dr. Jan Jacob, a former Superintendent of Schools with extensive experience in the process, to better understand the benefits of working toward a deeply aligned curriculum and to define a concrete process for doing so.

Phase I of the Project: Defining and Unwrapping High Frequency Performance Indicators

One of the founding premises of Deep Curriculum Alignment lies in the understanding that written, taught, and tested curricula must be tightly aligned in order to best serve students. During Phase I of the project, approximately 100 teachers from the Erie 1 BOCES region and surrounding areas gathered together to learn more about the New York State English Language Arts assessments and standards. These teachers began by identifying which Performance Indicators were linked to “high frequency” items on the assessments, historically. As they studied the longitudinal trends in testing and uncovered those Performance Indicators that were tested most often, it became apparent that the identified skills were not arbitrary in nature. In fact, it became very clear to the teachers involved that the high frequency Performance Indicators were some of the more vital skills that all good teachers need students to become proficient in. During this phase of the project, teachers were also exposed to Douglas Reeve’s conception of Power Standards and challenged to understand how the high frequency Performance Indicators present on the New York State English Language Arts assessments might begin to help us define what is most vital in our own curriculum….not because it simply shows up on the assessment, but quite possibly because the assessment might actually be testing many of the skills and understandings that everyone agrees are most important.

Once the high frequency Performance Indicators were identified, teachers worked together to revisit and deconstruct the assessment items mapped to these Performance Indicators at grades 4, 8, and 11. At the conclusion of Phase I, teachers had a clearer understanding of the types of text that students were challenged to read (content), the manner in which questions were posed and responses were given (context), and the level of thinking that each item demanded (cognitive load). Most importantly, teachers uncovered a host of embedded literacy and thinking skills that students needed to have at their disposal in order to perform well on these items. In this way, simple Performance Indicators were unwrapped, and the complexity of the items and what they demanded of students was more specifically defined.

Phase II of the Project: Articulating a Scope and Sequence

Phase II of the project challenged teachers to revisit the high frequency Performance Indicators and those embedded literacy and thinking skills uncovered during Phase I. Working groups, compromised of K-12 teachers, defined a clear scope and sequence for these embedded skills, ensuring a type of precision alignment that would provide for effective scaffolding across all grade levels

Phase III of the Project: Creating a Deeply Aligned Curriculum

Phase III of the project will bring teachers back to the table to begin building grade level curriculum that is tightly aligned to the scope and sequence articulated in Phase II. Larry Ainsworth will be working with members of our group and our region as a whole to guide us in the development of common authentic, formative assessments at each grade level. This will provide educators across the region with essential pieces of curriculum that will help students perform well not only on the New York State Assessments, but in the classrooms they are trained in and the world that we will leave to them as well.

This final phase of the project will serve to demonstrate this group’s belief that preparing kids for New York State Assessments has little to do with skill review books and practice testing. Good test preparation looks like good instruction: it is engaging, creative, rigorous, and rich with varied opportunities for success.

Angela Stockman