1. Children First Intensive
Conditions of Learning: Teachers as Action Researchers
Inquiry Team Meeting for ESO Network 19
December 16, 2008, Hosted by K147
Deena Abu-Lughod, SAF; Network Leader: Vera Barone
Karen Ames, Achievement Coach Randy Soderman, SSM; Sonya Brown, LIM: Linda Tom, BSM
Special Presenter: Deanna Gonzalez, AP, K147

2. Agenda 8:30-9:00 Where are we now? Collaborative Assessment Log
9:05-9:20 Conditions of Learning and Systemic Change
9:20-9:30 Building a community of learners: Feedback Principles
9:30-10:30 Teacher as Action Researcher: Tuning Protocol, with warm and cool feedback and probing questions (Deanna Gonzalez, K147)
10:30-10:45 Break – Collaborative Data Analysis Gallery Walk
10:45-11:15 Targeted Action/Change Strategy (Karen Ames)
11:15-11:30 Inquiry Team Interface
11:35-11:50 Identifying Resident Experts
11:50 -12:00 Closing and Evaluation

3. Learning Intentions Reflect on and share our progress to date
Provide effective feedback to adult learners
Recognize the conditions of learning in the CFI framework
Connect conditions of learning to change strategies/targeted action
Preview the CFI Interface and draft team responses
Identify resident experts

4. Collaborative Assessment Log
What’s Working
Greatest Challenge
Next Steps
Support needed from SAF

5. CAL Cross-pair Share
Complete the CFI CAL and make a clean copy to submit
Schools A and C share their CAL with Schools B and D respectively.
Schools B and D share their CAL with Schools A and C.
Schools A, B, C, D come together and share one success, one next step, their greatest challenge and what support they want from the network team.
Identify commonalities. Reporter shares the commonalities with the whole group.
Debrief: What do these findings suggest about our own next steps?

6. The three phases of Inquiry
Phase I
Identify target population students and one specific area of academic weakness.
Phase II
Bring more students into the school’s sphere of success by improving outcomes for target population students in the identified area.
Phase III
Ensure that the school continually brings more students into the sphere of success by improving decision-making processes.

7. A detailed look at the inquiry process
Define a school-wide focus group
Define a target population:
skill, sub-skill, students
Define a long-term goal
Define learning targets and short-term goals
Analyze systems that produced conditions of learning
Analyze target population conditions of learning
The intention here is to review our Theory of Change:
by studying a small manageable group of students outside a school’s sphere of success and using this information to accelerate their learning, Inquiry Teams in every school:
experience what is possible
illuminate the characteristics of their school’s decision-making systems that have resulted in the current sphere of success
Can make small improvements in those systems that make a big difference, expanding each school’s sphere of success systematically over time
The Process we have employed has been to:
Identify a small group of people to lead the work
Identify a small manageable group of students outside of our sphere of success on which to focus the work
Identify specific knowledge gaps and misconceptions that are interfering with these student’s making academic progress through analysis of granular assessment data
Analyzing the current conditions under which the students are expected to learn it including:
What we teach and when we teach it – the curriculum in use
Who teaches it – the teacher assignment and student scheduling practices in use
How it is taught – the pedagogic methods (structures, forms and formats) in use
How well it is taught – the practices in use
Identifying and implementing a small change in one or more of these learning conditions that will make a big difference
Measuring the effectiveness of that change on the target student’s learning
Analyzing the decision-making system (curriculum, teacher and student scheduling, pedagogy, and quality of practice) that resulted in the learning condition
Identifying and implementing a small change in the decision-making system that would make a big difference in student learning across the school
Measuring the effectiveness of that change on student learning and making adjustments where appropriate
Evaluate and revise based on interim progress measures
System-level
Instructional
Design and implement change strategy

8. Figure G: The Phase II cycle

9. Conditions of Learning
Definition: The conditions under which target population students learn the identified sub-skill and learning targets in your school, and over which educators in your building have control.
Conditions are created by decisions related to curriculum (what is taught), lesson design (how it is taught), teacher practice (how well it is taught) and teacher assignment and grouping (who teaches it).
Our objective: To understand how the current conditions operate to produce the specific outcomes you have identified for your target population. How do these conditions operate for students who are not successful? This is not pessimistic. Your practices led you to success with the majority of students. It is a way to get beyond where we get stuck.

10. Tools for examining conditions of learning
What: curriculum maps, lesson plans, notes from teacher interviews, low inference transcripts, student work
How: lesson design, low inference transcripts
How well: low inference transcripts
Who: student schedules over several years
Note: Even as you study the conditions of learning, you should implement a change strategy with the target population students based on your “hunches”. Your main hunch may be: we taught it, but they didn’t learn it. The study of the conditions of learning will help you prevent the reproduction of underperformance, but the target population students need immediate attention.

11. Warm and Cool Feedback

12. Warm Feedback: Do you see evidence of structured, textually-based character analysis?
A) I applaud you for your bravery and for actually grading the students’ work and making critical comments.
B) Clear evidence of structure. The essay has details and textual evidence.
C) I liked the way you linked the similar qualities of the characters from the two stories.
D) There is strong evidence of structure. The student included a thought-provoking introduction with a thesis. The body had evidence to support the thesis.
E) I see good examples of textual evidence when the student compares the trait of selfishness.

13. Cool Feedback: Do you see evidence of structured, textually-based character analysis?
A) I wonder if “eliminating run on sentences” is the most important trait the child needs to work on (the focus is mechanics).
B) I wonder if the structure of the first paragraph could have been organized differently.
C) It looks like Gregory has difficulty in using theme in his paragraph. He confuses theme with main characters.
D) It looks like you wanted Lucas to think about what motivates the characters but I’m not sure Lucas does that.
E) Review character analysis; provide specific comments referring to the rubric; give students their levels based on the rubric.

14. Probing Questions Probing questions help the adult learner
Think more deeply
Challenge his/her assumptions
Consider ways to rethink his/her practice
If the question doesn’t do this, it is either a clarifying question or a recommendation.
Clarifying questions are questions of fact (eg, How much time did it take? Did the students use a rubric?)
Avoid making recommendations (eg, Don’t you think you should…)

15. Formulating good probing questions
Check to see you don’t have a “right” answer in mind.
Make sure your probing question relates to the presenter’s focus.
Stay focused on the presenter’s agenda, not your own.
Try using verbs: What do you fear? Want? Get? Assume?
Try using “Why”.
Keep questions brief.
Allow for multiple responses.
Move thinking from reaction to reflection.
Encourage taking another party’s perspective.

16. Probing questions: Do you see evidence of structured, textually-based character analysis?
A) Are students being exposed to various writing styles vs the traditional way of writing and essay?
B) Can you possibly provide and revisit a small group instruction with similar needs as Lucas for understanding and gaining a better grasp of character analysis and motivation, focusing on details?
C) How do you think the writing would be different had the students focused on one character and analyzed the character traits?
D) What’s another way to structure your feedback to Pablo so you can give him a clearer and more elaborate plan to analyze “characters even deeper” rather than suggesting he just “highlight more traits at a more insightful level”?
E) Would direct quotes help support character analysis?

17. Tuning Protocol
Purpose: To receive feedback and fine tune a lesson, unit, assessment system, portfolio or other teacher work
Procedure: Presenter presents work Consultants examine artifacts Consultants ask clarifying questions (questions of fact to understand the context) Consultants formulate warm and cool feedback and probing questions. Presenter reflects on feedback. Debrief: What did it feel like?

18. Context of Student Work (K147)
Multiple data sources indicate a weakness in Vocabulary. The 19 target population students are 4th grade high 2’s/low 3’s.
Goal: 20 percentage point increase from the Fall 2008 Acuity Predictive ELA and the Spring Acuity Predictive.
Hypothesis: Improvement in vocabulary will improve their overall ELA comprehension.

19. Focus Question

20. What we’ve learned from our researchers:
Inquiry advances by reflecting on those factors that are within our control: primarily, our own beliefs and actions, our curriculum and our pedagogy.
Inquiry obliges us to look at the conditions of learning:
What is taught
How it is taught
How well it is taught
Who is teaching it
Inquiry requires us to engage external and internal resources: the professional literature and our own learning communities.
Inquiry is a discipline of continuous cycles of data collection, analysis, research, action and evaluation.

21. Inquiry in urgent times
There is urgency in our need to improve literacy, and this will happen through whole school change.
Inquiry team work with students will not necessarily impact January ELA scores, but we can expect at least 80% to make their their June goals.
But what our inquiry work reveals about the curriculum, pedagogical and staffing decisions taken in a school can have a large impact if we understand how.
We must activate our “sociological imagination”: shift our view from “individual troubles” to “social problems”; from individual solutions to systemic change.

22. Example: What is taught
At one school, they wanted to improve academic vocabulary but noticed that the large investment of PD did not seem to change teacher practice.
So they changed the lesson plan template so that teachers would write down daily vocabulary. This made all teachers more aware of the need to give students words to use, chose words deliberately and conscientiously, and allowed them to come together to share vocabulary strategies that worked, to agree upon tier 2 words that could be taught across the curriculum, and to monitor students’ learning through vocabulary tests, conversation, and journal writing. This was a change strategy whose effectiveness could be monitored and evaluated.

23. Another example: Who
At a NYC High School, teachers recognized that 9th grade was a pivotal year: if students were unsuccessful in 9th grade, they were unlikely to recover. By analyzing classroom transcripts across the school, and looking at staffing patterns, they realized that the least experienced teachers were most frequently placed in 9th grade. To make an impact on 9th grade, they decided that the most experienced teachers should work with the 9th graders (instead of the honors students).
In just one year, the percent of students accumulating 10+ credits in the first year increased from 65% to 71%.

24. February Sharing
Today, we helped Deanna work through an issue related to the conditions of learning so she could benefit from your experience.
In February, schools that would like to should benefit from the collective experience in this room by working with a protocol in small mixed groups (4 presenting schools, who will bring 8 copies of an “artifact set”), and each presenting school will pick which protocol they would like to use:
Adapted Descriptive Consultancy (for brainstorming)
Tuning Protocol (for warm/cool feedback and probing questions)

25. Artifact Set
A lesson plan that relates to the classroom instruction on the subskill that the focus student has difficulty with.
The task that is related to that lesson which relates to the subskill that the focus student has difficulty with.
The work that up to 3 students produced in relation to that task.
A low inference transcript taken during a lesson when that subskill was addressed.
A reflection written by the classroom teacher about how the student(s)’ understanding and execution of the task relates to the teacher’s own intentions. This reflection should discuss the following:
What is the connection between the subskill, the lesson and the task?
What does the student’s work reveal about his/her strengths and weaknesses vis a vis the task?
How did the intended teaching connect with the student’s product?
What would be the next steps for the student?
Reflection(s) written by the Inquiry Team addressing the same questions considered by the teacher.

26. Break
Take a gallery walk to look at the observations and questions posed during the November collaborative analysis activity.

27. Network 19: Percent of Girls and Boys with IEPs

28. Design and Implement a Change Strategy/ Targeted Actions
Once we have examined the conditions of learning, we need to research instructional strategies that might be useful for addressing the needs of the target population.
The AIR Scaffolded Inquiry site will give you access to 400 abstracts related to research-based instructional strategies as well as group process documents that can help focus inquiry team agendas.
The site is accessible through the DOE home page:

29. Targeted Action: Context Clues

30. IQT Interface Slides
By December 23, all schools are expected to complete the questions about their inquiry teams on the Inquiry Team Interface at:
In your packet, you have a printout of the questions that you will need to answer. In the remaining time, please have a look at those questions and consider your responses.

31. Resident Experts

32. Feedback and debrief; Evaluation
Please complete the Feedback Form now.
Did we achieve our intentions?
Reflect on and share our progress to date
Provide effective feedback to adult learners
Recognize the conditions of learning in the CFI framework
Connect conditions of learning to change strategies
Preview the CFI Interface and draft team responses
Identify resident experts