Supporting Effective Teaching, Learning and LeadershipParkland School Division: Lead Teachers Session 1

Website: http://galileo.org/pl/psd70/Password: PSD70

Individual Reflection- Review Video

Based on the review video respond to the following questions:

1. What is one thing that your school is doing well?

2. Where does your school need to go next?

3. What insights did this prompt for your role as an instructional leader?

Group Discussion: Gather insights from your colleagues that might be useful in your context.

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Forming Ground Rules (Creating Norms): School Reform Initiative

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Gathering Around Evidence

In what ways has evidence of learning played a role in your school?

How might you move forward with using evidence to inform teaching practices in your context?

Gather insights from colleagues related to the use of evidence that might be useful in your context:

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Knowledge-Building Cycles

“If improving outcomes for students is not the purpose of professional learning, teachers are likely to default to the position that collecting information about students is not about teaching” (Timperley, 2011, p.26)

Case Study: Video

Steps of the knowledge- building

cycleEvidence from the video case study

1. Students’ Needs Learning outcome

identified Pre-assessment Ongoing

formative assessment

2. Teachers’ Inquiry Gather and

analyzing evidence to inform teaching practices

3. Knowledge/ Skills Identify next

steps What do students

need to know and/or be able to do?

4. Student Opportunities

Engage students in new learning

5. Checking Outcomes

Student growth? Did they learn

what was intended?

Triad Discussion: How might you use a knowledge-building cycle in your leadership work?

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Engaging Students in Learning: Using ProvocationsType of Provocation Ways that you have hooked students into learning

Physical connection the invitation to learn is

through the physical manipulation or exploration of an object

Connect through play students are invited to explore

their environment or a new learning topic through play

Prompt thinking a problem or discrepant event

piques curiosity, elicits questions and causes thinking

Create the need to know the hook is the end goal students are excited about

what they get to do

Provide a sense of purpose helping someone out getting behind a cause showing leadership

Connect with emotions students feel a deep

connection to the work

Partner Discussion: What questions might you ask to prompt thinking when you recognize that one of your colleagues is designing a task that might not invite students into the discipline?

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Getting Hooked on a Topic(From “Focus on Inquiry”, Chapter 2, galileo.org)

There’s value in connecting your topic to students’ experiences. Hook your students by asking the following questions:

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What’s weird about the topic?Your goal is to build on your students’ natural curiosity. Life Sciences lends itself wonderfully to weird topics. New technologies let us see creatures that are stranger than fiction, living in hostile environments. What lives at the extreme edges of the planet? What happens when one living thing leaves an ecosystem? What gross or intriguing defense mechanisms let living things adapt to their environment?

Are there life and death issues involved?Talk to your students and uncover the human side of the story. Who has suffered defending the idea you are studying? What makes a hero, villain or underdog? Find people who have challenged huge odds or overcome insurmountable obstacles. How are elements of today’s lifestyle harming us?

What challenges our sense of justice or fair play? Questioning what’s right and wrong.Present questions that force students to take a stand. Important thinking skills are developed as students go beyond the facts to research and defend their point of view. Questions of what’s right and wrong help students decide how society determines the difference, while helping articulate their own vision and values. Look for the following within the topic you have chosen:• Contradictory reports about the same event• Historical injustices• Current debates raging in the media• Reports that challenge cultural assumptions.

Is there more here than meets the eye?Issues may seem simple on the surface, but once you start digging, all sorts of possibilities emerge. Questions such as ‘how can we help the poor?’ and ‘how do we stop bullying?’, may seem simplistic, but they also prompt huge differences of opinion and opportunities to grapple with various solutions.

What is secret, hidden or puzzling?Too often, school subjects are presented as cut and dried matters of facts and figures to be memorized. There are many things in the world, however, the experts are still uncovering, and new answers are emerging every day. These are areas where students can be easily engaged. Consider the following:• What is space really like? Recent space probes have overturned many

things we thought we knew about our solar system.• Why can we predict some environmental phenomena but tornadoes and

earthquakes still surprise us?

Getting Hooked on a Topic: Exploring Possibilities For Designing Worthwhile Work

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Leadership Discussion

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Next Steps:

Over the next few weeks, find one way to use evidence with a colleague(s) in order to determine next steps in teaching. Bring back a synopsis of the context of the conversation as to how the evidence informed the teaching to Session 2.

• How might you establish ground rules or norms during your meeting times with colleagues?

• How might you move forward with engaging colleagues in knowledge-building cycles?

• How might you support the learning of your colleagues in addressing issues of student engagement?