1. Summer Leadership Institute
IS YOUR LAB ALIGNED?
Claudia Rowe
Rose Sedely
August 9-10, 2012

2. Common Board Configuration
Date: August 9 – 10, 2012
Vocabulary: rigor, inquiry, high order thinking skills, lab write up
Bell Ringer: Think about and discuss, with your shoulder partner, the last lab you observed.
Agenda:
a. 21st Century Skills
b. Highly Effective Indicators
Is Your Lab Aligned?
Evaluate a Lab
Learning Goal: The participates will be able to evaluate a lab investigation effectively .
Benchmark:
Domain 1: DQ 6, DQ 4
Domain 2: Elements 42 and 44
Domain 3: Element 51
Summarizing Activity:
Reflection slide
b. Participation Scale and Reflection
Objective: The participants will review and assess specific labs for rigor and higher order thinking skills.
Homework: Reflect on this session when observing a lab.
Essential Question: What are the necessary component s of an effective lab/inquiry?

3. Lake County Schools Vision Statement
A dynamic, progressive and collaborative learning community embracing change and diversity where every student will graduate with the skills needed to succeed in postsecondary education and the workplace.
Mission Statement
The mission of the Lake County Schools is to provide every student with individual opportunities to excel.
Lake County Schools is committed to excellence in all curricular opportunities and instructional best practices. This focus area addresses closing the achievement gap, increased graduation rate, decreased dropout rate, increase in Level 3 and above scores on the FCAT, achieving an increase in the number of students enrolled in advanced placement and dual enrollment opportunities and implementing the best practices in instructional methodology.
Summer Leadership Institute

4. 21st Century Skills Tony Wagner, The Global Achievement Gap
Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
Collaboration and Leadership
Agility and Adaptability
Initiative and Entrepreneurialism
Effective Oral and Written Communication
Accessing and Analyzing Information
Curiosity and Imagination
Critical Thinking and Problem Solving: To compete in the new global economy, companies need their workers to think about how to continuously improve their products, processes, or services. “The challenge is this: How do you do things that haven't been done before, where you have to rethink or think anew? It's not incremental improvement any more. The markets are changing too fast.”
Collaboration and Leadership: Teamwork is no longer just about working with others in your building. “Technology has allowed for virtual teams. We have teams working on major infrastructure projects that are all over the U.S. On other projects, you're working with people all around the world on solving a software problem. Every week they're on a variety of conference calls; they're doing Web casts; they're doing net meetings.”
Agility and Adaptability: Ability to think, be flexible, change, and use a variety of tools to solve new problems. “We change what we do all the time. I can guarantee the job I hire someone to do will change or may not exist in the future, so this is why adaptability and learning skills are more important than technical skills.”
Initiative and Entrepreneurialism: Taking chances and being a risk-taker. “I say to my employees, if you try five things and get all five of them right, you may be failing. If you try 10 things, and get eight of them right, you're a hero.”
Effective Oral and Written Communication: The ability to be clear, concise, focused, energetic and passionate around the points they want to make. “We are routinely surprised at the difficulty some young people have in communicating: verbal skills, written skills, presentation skills. They have difficulty being clear and concise; it's hard for them to create focus, energy, and passion around the points they want to make. If you're talking to an exec, the first thing you'll get asked if you haven't made it perfectly clear in the first 60 seconds of your presentation is, ‘What do you want me to take away from this meeting?’ They don't know how to answer that question.”
Accessing and Analyzing Information: The ability to know how to access and analyze large quantities of information. “There is so much information available that it is almost too much, and if people aren't prepared to process the information effectively it almost freezes them in their steps.”
Curiosity and Imagination: The development of young people's capacities for imagination, creativity, and empathy will be increasingly important for maintaining the United States' competitive advantage in the future. “People who've learned to ask great questions and have learned to be inquisitive are the ones who move the fastest in our environment because they solve the biggest problems in ways that have the most impact on innovation.”
Summer Leadership Institute

5. High Effect Size Indicators
“The Department’s identified set of indicators on high effect size instructional and leadership strategies with a causal relationship to student learning growth constitute priority issues for deliberate practice and faculty development.”
-Florida Department of Education, 2012
Student learning needs and faculty and leadership development needs will vary from school to school and from district to district. However, contemporary research reveals a core of instructional and leadership strategies that have a higher probability than most of positively impacting student learning in significant ways. The indicators below link formative feedback and evaluation to contemporary research on practices that have a positive impact on student learning growth.
• Research on the cause and effect relationships between instructional and leadership strategies and student outcomes address the effect size of a strategy: What degree of impact does it have?
• In the context of district instructional and leadership evaluation systems, effect size is a statistical estimation of the influence a strategy or practice has on student learning. Effect size calculations result from statistical analyses in research focused on student learning where the correct and appropriate use of a strategy yields better student learning growth than when the strategy is not used or is used incorrectly or inappropriately.
• In research terms, those strategies often identified as “high effect size” are those with higher probabilities of improving student learning.
Classroom teachers need a repertoire of strategies with a positive effect size so that what they are able to do instructionally, after adapting to classroom conditions, has a reasonable chance of getting positive results. As school leaders and mentor teachers begin to focus on feedback to colleagues to improve proficiency on practices that improve student learning growth, emphasis should be on those strategies that have a high effect size. Where every Florida classroom teacher and school leader has
Summer Leadership Institute

6. Classroom Teacher High Effect Indicators
School Leadership High Effect Indicators
Learning Goal with Scales
Tracking Student Progress
Established Content Standards
Multi-tiered System of Supports
Clear Goals
Text Complexity
ESOL Students
Feedback Practices
Facilitating Professional Learning
Clear Goals and Expectations
Instructional Resources
High Effect Size Strategies
Instructional Initiatives
Monitoring Text Complexity
Interventions
Instructional Adaptations
ESOL Strategies
Summer Leadership Institute

7. Is Your Lab Aligned?

8. How does the lab reflect RIGOR?
Is the lab grade appropriate?
Is the lab content appropriate?
Which benchmark is the lab aligned to? (See Specifications and Curriculum Map)
Does the lab contain the necessary rigor?

9. Does the lab reflect higher order thinking skills?
Questions at the beginning, during, and end of the lab:
Are the questions during the lab critical and thought provoking?
Do the questions require higher order thinking?
Are the questions open ended?
Does the lab provide extensions for further investigations?

10. Lab Management
How will the Lab/Inquiry be conducted in a 45/50/90 minute period of time?
Grouping: How will collaborative groups be formed?
Do I have the needed equipment/supplies?
Is the lab write up the school’s or county’s (available on Moodle)? Do I have a rubric?

11. Three phases of a Lab/Inquiry
Pre lab - Prepare students for the lab: Preview – instructions and materials
Lab/Inquiry – conduct the lab
Post Lab –Complete lab write up with the rubric. Discussion of hypothesis and conclusion. Where to go from here? This is where connections are made and misconception are repaired. MOST important! If this is missing it is JUST an activity!

12. REFLECTION QUESTIONS?
While this is a favorite lab of mine…… can it be modified for the grade level and content?
Will the modification bring the lab in line with the NGSSS and meet the rigor needed?
If not what are my options?
What are the lab requirements?
Required number of labs/inquiry per week – 1 per week
Writing – lab write up
Discussion of results and conclusions

13. Participant Scale and Reflection (Please complete and turn in)
0-Not Using
No understanding or implementation steps taken away
1-Beginning
Little understanding and inconsistent implementation steps taken away
2-Developing
Moderate understanding and implementation steps taken away
3-Applying
Consistent understanding and implementation steps taken away along with monitoring componets for effective execution
4-Innovating
In addition to criteria of Applying, enhanced understanding, implementation, monitoring, and execution take aways
Summer Leadership Institute