Lead Evaluator Training Evidence Based Observation Lead Evaluator Training Part 2 – Day 2 Welcome Back! Welcome back—remind of protocol for getting attention. Locate bathrooms and exits.

Feedback: Continue to do the group work Keep showing videos and time to discuss with district colleagues More practice/more videos Less videos or shorter ones Would love to see observation tools folks are using that facilitate this type of observation

“Homeplay” Practice collecting evidence of “teaching to an outcome” Examine an observation that you have completed, looking for evidence and bias/opinion Identify the presence or absence of “teaching to an outcome” in your current observation tool

Today’s Outcomes: Explain the difference between current practice and evidence based observation Identify and define criteria for one area of effective instruction around which evidence collection will be focused Describe strategies that a district could employ to increase the quality of evaluations and the agreement of evaluators Collect and categorize evidence based on four areas of effective instruction

What does it look like and sound like when a teacher uses effective questioning strategies? Everybody think – tell the person next to you….Jon Saphier and Spencer Kaagan – 60% of instructional time is spent asking questions

Rubric Language: Marshall: Plans all units embedding big ideas, essential questions, knowledge and skill goals that cover all Bloom’s levels. 2011 Danielson: Teacher uses open-ended questions, inviting students to think and/or have multiple possible answers. The teacher makes effective use of wait time. The teacher builds on uses student responses to questions effectively. Discussions enable students to talk to one another, without ongoing mediation by the teacher. The teacher calls on most students, even those who don’t initially volunteer. Many students actively engage in the discussion. Marzano: Teacher engages student with explicit decision making, problem solving, experimental inquiry or investigation task that requires them to generate and test hypotheses. Teacher uses wait time.

Criteria for Effective Questioning Congruent (relevant) to the learning All students Invitation to think A range of questions are used to extend thinking from a base of knowledge to higher order thinking that is more critical and creative

Continuum of Questioning High Consensus Low Consensus Yes/No - Fact A flexible questioning.Teachers need to plan and use a range of questions along a continuum from high consensus to ones that are answerable in different ways Why or why not? Defend your position..What if? 9

Beam your question to all students! Questioning… Hands up if you know… Can anyone tell me? Susan, what is the answer to number 4… Popsicle sticks notice…all phrasing has been in the form of directives throughout this piece Beam your question to all students!

Wait Time Effects: Length of student responses increases between 300- 700 % More inferences More speculative thinking More questions Decrease in failure to respond Decrease in discipline problems

Video: Middle School Math Bonnie Bushaw

Evidence Collected: The teacher asked, “What is dividing? What do we do when we divide? What does it mean?” Student responded, “It means to cut a big whole into smaller pieces—like cutting a pie into smaller pieces.” Teacher asked, “What could we divide besides pies? Student responded, “pizza.” White board partner activity—find a pair with a similar piece of evidence.

Evidence Collected: Teacher asked, “ok—Do we have to divide fractions? Can we divide something that isn’t fractions?” Student stated, “You could divide numbers.” Teacher said, “ok, I could divide numbers, why would I want to do that? Whatever for?” Student said, “Like to…like if you are on a field trip you could see how many groups you need for one person to watch over.”

Video: 5th Grade Social Studies

Evidence Collected: The teacher asked, “Why did slavery happen?” One student stated, “I’m going to add on white people needed slaves so that they could get fast and easy money.” Another student stated, “I think slavery happened because the plantation owners were lazy.”

Moving towards evaluating performance over time… Materials: 3 sample observation documents for a high school math teacher NHPS Classroom Practice Rubric

Directions: On Your Own: Place 3 reports side-by-side in order Use the NHPS rubric for classroom practice to determine an overall rating for the assigned indicators (C1, C4, C9) At Your Table: Share your ratings, come up with a consensus on a rating for each assigned indicator Discuss: How did your ratings compare? How far apart were you? What challenges did you face coming to consensus?

Evidence Collection with Individual Feedback! Your Mission: Collect 4-5 pieces of evidence FOR EACH EFFECTIVE TEACHING CATEGORY that you will label and e-mail to Barb and Pat by December 8th. Label the evidence as “Check for Understanding,” “Student Engagement,” “Teach to an Outcome” and/or “Effective Questioning.” Keep in mind that “good evidence” is often quotations or numerical facts having to do with the students or the teacher.

Sample: The teacher stated, “During today’s lesson, you will identify coins and their values. You will practice calculating the sums of the coins.”(Teaching to an outcome) The teacher asked, “When would you need to add coins?” (Effective Questioning) The teacher displayed clusters of coins on the interactive white board. All students wrote the sums of the coins on their individual white boards and showed their work to the teacher when she said, “Show!” (Student Engagement/Checking for Understanding)

Video:

“Homeplay”: Email your 4-5 pieces of evidence (labeled) to pwalsh2@btboces.org and bphillip@btboces.org by December 8, 2011. Practice collecting evidence using the four areas of instruction we have studied Identify the 3-5 key areas that your district will use when conducting classroom observations

Coming Soon: Part 3 Sessions! Thank You! Coming Soon: Part 3 Sessions!