1. Central City Junior High and High School
Instructional Rounds Visit April 12, 2011

2. Theory of Action
If teachers were committed to learning, developing and holding students accountable to learning 21st century skills in student-centered classrooms where students have opportunities to apply their learning to real life situations and demonstrate their learning through an outcome based project, and if administrators provide staff with opportunities and encouragement for continued growth, job embedded professional development and ongoing coaching, then students will leave the district better able to meet the demands of career, college and the global economy.

3. Problem of Practice
Students are not asked to do tasks that are relevant or at a high level of rigor.
What questions are the teachers asking?
What questions are the students asking?
What tasks are the students asked to do?

4. District Initiatives
August of 2008 – We handed Macintosh laptops to our students in grades 5-12 for their use throughout the school year. The laptops were valued around $1000 a piece, and our students keep them 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week during the school year. We are proud to be leaders in the State of Iowa in the implementation of a 1:1 laptop program for our students.

5. District Initiatives con’t
Partnership with Jones Regional Facility giving our students access to college courses and career academies.  We have seen our enrollment in Jones Regional grow from 3 in to 21 in and for next year we will have 37 students attending in
We have great on-site opportunities for our students that include Physics, Calculus and a number of courses that allow our students to earn college credit at no cost to our students.
We continue to add courses that peak our students interest and add relevance to our ever changing world:  Robotics, Virtual Reality, Web 2.0, Social-Networking, Independent Exploration, Student Tech Team, and Student driven exploratory classes to name a few.  (*Most of these will begin being offered for the school year).

6. THE INSTRUCTIONAL CORE
CONTENT
Points of entry for improvement of instruction
The culture is present in the academic tasks that students are asked to do
If you can’t see it in the core, it’s not there
Academic tasks define the real accountability system in your school
STUDENT
TEACHER

7. 1. What questions are teachers asking?

8. 2.What questions are students asking?
Turn to other partner… what are ways you can observe or gather evidence for this

9. What are the tasks that students are being asked to complete?

10. Classroom Observations
Reminders:
Describe what you see
Be specific (fine grained)
Pay attention to the instructional core (teacher, student, content)
Observation etiquette
Fine to ask students questions when it seems appropriate.
Refrain from talking to each other in classrooms; save discussions for the debriefing process.

11. Questions?

12. Let’s observe!

13. Debriefing Classroom Observations
On your own:
Read through your notes
Star data that seems relevant to the problem of practice and/or data that seems important
Select 5-10 pieces of data, and write each on individual sticky-notes 13

14. Debriefing Classroom Observations
1. Share observations of each classroom you visited. Help each other stay in the descriptive (not evaluative) voice.
“What did you see/hear that makes you think that?”
As you discuss each classroom, use Bloom’s Taxonomy to sort your stickies.
Add observations to the “relevant/important” category on a separate chart. These are observations that don’t fit on the Taxonomy but are relevant to the problem of practice.
Identify patterns.

15. Debriefing Classroom Observations
With your partner group:
Designate a facilitator (task-master!)
Compare your charts and identify and discuss common patterns.

16. Debriefing Classroom Observations
Fill in a three-quadrant grid that summarizes the charts.
Patterns
Evidence for the POP
Questions and/or Wonderings

17. Record Predictions Prediction:
In looking at the patterns and evidence of the POP, what predictions can you make?
Prediction:
If you were a student at Central City Junior High School or High School, and you did everything you were expected to do, what would you know and be able to do? What does this tell us about the likelihood that students are
engaged in high level tasks that are focused on rigor and relevance.

18. Identify the Next Level of Work
What support can the Central City Community School District provide teachers and administrators to support their efforts to provide students the opportunity to compete tasks that are relevant and are at a high level of rigor.
Brainstorm as a whole group and record ideas on chart paper. Have two people recording ideas on two separate charts.

19. Next Level of Work
From the list of brainstormed suggestions, identify suggestions for the next level of work:
Next week
Next month
By the end of the year.
Suggestions should be directly related to the problem of practice:
It is unclear if the kinds of questions that are being asked in the classroom constitute higher order thinking skills.

20. Share key recommendations with the Central City leadership team…
“The real path to greatness, it turns out, requires simplicity and diligence. It requires clarity, not instant illumination. It demands each of us to focus on what is vital-and to eliminate all of the extraneous distractions.” Jim Collins

21. Share key recommendations with the Central City Leadership Team
Share charts and suggestions for NLOW
Central City Leadership Team - What additional questions did this work generate for you?

22. Wrap Up
Thank you Central City Junior High and High School!
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