Collect Data And Use Data

By Author: Tracy McGrady
Total Articles: 56
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Our data collection system included results on annual state achievement tests as well as a number of common formative assessments given by the school to gauge success and theoretically used to plan instruction. On each visit, we interviewed the literacy peer coach and principal. These interviews were conducted separately and were used to inform our staff development sessions as well as our interactions with faculty. These interviews ranged from the shortest being 12 minutes to the longest lasting 93 minutes, with an average of 38 minutes. Information from the interviews was integrated immediately into our work with the school, often resulting in Shoes Online changes to our professional development plan or focus of classroom observations. Interviews were recorded and summarized on the commute home.

In addition, we conducted classroom observations and feedback sessions monthly for the two and a half years of this study. For each trip to Western, at least two of us were on campus. The total number of person days of data collection was 86. These were in addition to the days ...
... we were on campus for administrator meetings, staff development sessions, or the annual faculty retreat. On each of these days, each of us conducted at least 12 classroom observations (3 per 90-minute block period); the total number of classroom observations was 1,161. Using a constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), we reviewed and discussed our classroom field notes during the commute home from the school. We also summarized our notes and e-mailed them to the principal and peer coach, inviting them to comment. We did not discuss any specific teacher but noted trends in instructional routines and made recommendations for the use of professional development time.

The first two days of our engagement with Western left us and the LLT excited about the possibilities and eager to get to work. Our plan included weekly professional development on specific components of a school wide literacy intervention as well as regular coaching and feedback for teachers. The week following our visit, at their first professional development session, members of the LLT presented their plan to the faculty. They repeated the content four times so that every teacher had an opportunity to participate. This structure was familiar to the faculty as this is how they regularly engaged in professional development.

In an e-mail to us following this session, the peer coach stated, "All I can say is amazing. Nobody, not even the electives teachers, complained. They are with us and feel like we're finally doing something real." For the next several weeks, the preparation period sessions were implemented as we had planned during our two-day team meeting. The following month, we visited Western again to Discount Shoes participate in professional development sessions and to observe classrooms. There was clear evidence of the professional development plan as teachers experimented with think-alouds, Cornell notes, and writing-to-learn prompts.

This continued, with teachers attending weekly sessions and our visiting monthly for several months. Teachers were generally positive about the feedback we provided and often asked questions about our recommendations. By the fourth month, however, we noticed that the classroom implementation wasn't progressing. Teachers were going through the motions of the literacy intervention, but we often felt like we were watching a literacy commercial and not like the instructional routine was embedded into the lesson. For example, during an observation of a science teacher, the field notes say, "Students are taking notes in Cornell form, but they're copying information from an overhead projector that is in Cornell format." In another observation that day, we noted, "The teacher is thinking aloud, but it's just a collection of personal stories. He's not labeling the cognitive strategies he's using nor is he doing much other than making personal connections with the text."