SUPPORTING STUDENTS BEFORE AND DURING INSTRUCTION This presentation shows teachers how to prepare students for instruction and use their formative and summative data to identify students needing intervention, have the intervention planned, and use it while the instructional objective is being taught.

“We spend a lot of time trying to remediate students who have failed or are failing our classes. I often wonder why we don’t take that energy we use addressing failure by doing what we can to prevent failure in the first place.” Mindsteps August 18, 2010 Read and discuss this quote from Mindsteps.

Learning Targets Participants will : understand how to interpret four types of data to better understand our students. understand how to support your students before and during instruction. This is what we will achieve today. First review the importance of using four types of data to better understand our students. Second, how to better prepare our students for a new unit of instruction and support them during the teaching of this unit. 3 3

This chart is to demonstrate the four kinds of data that all educators should use in making decisions about our students. Teachers will have a copy of this handout in the packet. Review the four types of data: Demographic data: Enrollment, attendance, drop-out, ethnicity, gender, grade level, income, parental education etc. Perceptions: perceptions of learning environment, values and beliefs, attitudes, observations, what students, parents, teachers etc. think about school, subjects etc. Student Learning: Standardized test, summative assessments, formative assessments, any information that might be used to assess student learning. School Processes: School programs, schedules etc. and how they affect student learning.

How well do you know Susie? Susie scored a Level 2 on her 2007-2008 Grade 8 Reading EOG. Susie scored a Level 2 in sixth and seventh grades, but her elementary scores were consistently higher. Susie is the oldest of three children who are being raised by a single mother. Susie’s mother is a college-educated registered nurse. Susie hates to read, but she likes soccer. For the past two years, Susie’s reading teachers have used the Brain Buster EOG test-prep series. Click through the different bullets and ask teachers if they have enough data to make good intervention decisions for Susie. Remind teachers that a lot times we stop with just the learning data.

Support Students Before Instruction Pretest to obtain data on student background knowledge. Anticipate what students may find confusing. Determine key vocabulary and pre-teach it. Teach students learning skills needed to be successful. (note taking, how to read text, etc.) Select advance organizers for students. Fill in missing background knowledge. Go over the above guidelines and explain to teachers these are the pre-instruction steps they should take before starting any new unit or objective of study. Explain these steps will help students be more successful and it will decrease the amount of intervention that is needed.

Supporting Students During Instruction Identify mastery-level baselines. Establish “red flags.” Develop ongoing assessment measures to identify students with red flags. Select appropriate student interventions for red flags. Monitor the effectiveness of each intervention. Go over the above guidelines and explain to the teachers the importance that each has in obtaining maximum student proficiency by the end of the instruction. Each of these bullets will be explained in the next slides.

Mastery Baselines Mastery is not a single point of success, but a range of successful behaviors. Mastery is determined by the teacher and what the standards and curriculum say the students need to know and how well they need to know it. Mastery is determined by first looking at a grade baseline for assessments. Mastery is also determined through other items that may help you develop a fuller picture. Go over the above guidelines for establishing mastery of each task that is being taught during a unit of study. Use the mastery set for each task to determine what is mastery for the whole unit. Explain that 100% mastery is not a good benchmark to set. If we had been held to that standard most of us would still be struggling to get out of elementary school.

Red Flags “Red Flags” are early-warning signals that students are headed for a destructive struggle and should be: very clearly defined hard to ignore trigger action focused only on academic concerns, not student behaviors. Example: Students that miss more than 2 problems on a 10 problem math test. Explain to teachers the importance of setting a “red flag” level for each assessment during instruction. This must be done during the planning process. Red flags tell us when students are starting to get in trouble.

Ongoing Assessment Measures Should be developed to administer during instruction that will alert the teacher when a student triggers a “red flag.” Can be formative or summative. Common assessments, small quizzes, homework, performance task, etc. Assessment data should be analyzed to determine which students have “red flags.” Explain to teachers planning using the Backward Design calls for them to plan assessments before planning the instruction. There should be a variety of assessment types used to insure accurate measure of student mastery. It is imperative that the teachers plan what is the “red flag” level for each assessment. Teachers must analyze all assessments and determine which of their students have “red flags”. Early diagnosis helps provide a quick cure for failure before full failure sets in. How would you like it if you went to the doctor and he diagnosed you as having pneumonia but said we don’t treat pneumonia patients until next month. You might be dead before treatment can be provided. Same with students, if we wait until the end to provide interventions for those that are not being successful then many students will fail. Remember failure is not only a measure of how well the students are doing but also a measure of how well we are doing with our instruction. We cannot accept failure.

RED FLAGS WORKSHEET What do we want our students to learn?   What do we want our students to know? How will we know they are learning it? How will we respond when they don’t learn it? OBJECTIVE MASTERY BASELINE ASSESSMENT MEASURE RED FLAG Explain to teachers this is an example of a chart that can be used in planning for mastery, types of assessments that will be used and the red flags for each assessment for an objective. Key point to emphasize is that these items must be planned for not done by the seat of our britches. This sheet is in your packet and on our website.

Select Appropriate Interventions Red flags are symptoms of failure. Interventions: address the root causes of failure. provide a temporary learning support on as-needed basis and are removed when no longer needed. need to be progressive: Less to more intense as needed. must be immediate and cannot wait until the student is failing. Explain to teachers that once we have set red flags they need to plan the interventions they will use with their students who have the red flags. We cannot wait until we send them to some computer program to fix our problems. The interventions are our responsibility and need to be used quickly. Students who start to fail get discouraged and this brings more failure, so if we can get them back on track quickly they will be successful. Research has shown that mass interventions all have a low success rates. Interventions planned for and applied during instruction have a high success rate.

Intervention Selection continued… Interventions should: get students quickly back on track. NOT be punitive! be seamless and unobtrusive. be systematic. be specific. NOT be labor intensive. be a part of the lesson planning process. Don’t allow students to fail! Demand Mastery! This slide is a continuation of the previous slide. Stress again that when students fail we have failed.

Examples of Interventions Conference with student Good constructive feedback Graphic organizers Cheat sheets and cues Mnemonic devices Peer tutoring Mandatory extra help Task breakdowns Explain this is not an all inclusive list of interventions just examples. Master teachers have many interventions in their tool box.

Intervention Planning Worksheet Red Flags What are your red flags in this unit that tell you students are not being successful? Interventions What corrective actions will get students back on track? Miss more than two on a 10 problem fraction test. Small group tutoring during daily remediation time.   Explain interventions have to be planned for not pulled out of the air. The above is an example of a planning sheet. Each assessment has a red flag benchmark and their should be an intervention planned for all students who have red flags on that particular assessment. This sheet is in the packet and on our website.

Elementary Instruction Planning Sheet Subject What do we want our students to learn?   How will we know they are learning? (Be specific) How will we respond when they don’t learn? (Be specific) How will we respond when they do learn? ELA NCSCOS Objective #: Essential Learning: Math Science Social Studies Health The above planning sheet was given to elementary teachers back in the fall. This sheet is in your packet and on our website.

This is a form that was given out at the last Common Core Day This is a form that was given out at the last Common Core Day. It is a sheet for students that continue to have problems even though we have provided them with interventions. We must look at all the data with these students to determine the causes of failure and decide on more intense means of intervention. This sheet is in your packet and on our website.