Brain explosion!

This has been one of those brain busting weeks in this world of research, reflection, and try sometime new world.  Sooooo many "ah-ha"s!   One while talking with my principal, that I hope to return to later.  We have an action plan and some research to do, so I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch.....kinda like I did with my last post.  Because THAT post let to the biggest piece of humble pie I've had in a while. AND more changes.  Thank goodness I work with such wonderful people.

**Disclaimer** I'm using the faces of my second child in this post to help hide my red embarrassed face.**

This was how I felt last week as I was posting.....

I was all "oh, yea, I figured something out...Look at these awesome changes!"

In less than 24 hours, I had a conversation with my principal, a conversation with my team teacher, and then...watched this webinar (and the three links she refers to within the webinar):

To say, my mind was blown was an understatement.  I even read her books this summer! This was the moment, I began to feel like this..

Dang it.  I thought I was going the right way, but maybe, just maybe, I went the more complicated route. 

So, big girl britches on... I talked with my principal, talked with my co-teacher, took a minute (or 2) to myself and have reconfigured the reading block in effort to support our students on this journey to two year's growth.  

We didn't completely change everything, but it is clear that conferencing with readers has a huge impact on growth.  Growth mindset has a huge impact on growth.  Focusing students (and teachers) on one goal at a time has a huge impact on growth.  

So here's a look at our new schedule:

We have a plan for conferences, some strategies for each individual reader, and a shared outlook that we are going to take this project one week at a time.  Feeling like we could do some good...here we go!

Project update:   I'm at least feeling a pull towards one of the areas of questions I had in my questions post.  I battle with where to focus because I want to spend my effort in an area where a school's actions or a teacher's actions has the most influence.  At this point, I'm feeling like it's in the classroom.  Should I continue to focus here?  Should I go back to looking at what happens before school? Or after school? What are other similar school's doing that need to make this much growth..does it matter if our demographics are the same or different?

Crossing my fingers that we are moving in a good direction. These kids, and their success, mean the world to me.  And even though I feel like never opening a book or listening to another webinar because I don't know how much my brain (or my sleepless mind...did I mention that I'm also pregnant so sleep is rare anyway?!) can take, here's to another week of finding the best and doing what's best for kids.  

I may be lost, but I'm taking action!

I may not understand all of the answers yet to all of my questions, but I do have a what and a why.  Having a what and a why puts my engine in gear..time to do something!

With our WHAT being "make two year's growth", and our WHY "because our kids need to leave us reading on grade level", there isn't a teacher in the world who wouldn't think that something needs to happen right away.  Eventually, I'll work on the proactive piece.  Right now, kids need something.  What can I do, reactive or not, to make the WHAT happen.

What's happening so far?
A LOT!
Thank goodness I team teach with an ahhh-mazing teacher and person who is willing and (most importantly) ready to go on this crazy journey with me.  We have changed everything about our reading block.  When I started talking to her about my plans and my what, and my why she was totally on board.  Immediately our brains (almost) exploded with ideas.

First, re-assess.  After 8 weeks of instruction and our new drive, we immediately took time to do a basic reading inventory.  With new data, it was time to analyze.  We decided to look closer this time, meaning that we wanted more than "just a level" by asking questions like "what exactly is this one student missing?" "what could be the one changing factor?" "what patterns do we see overall?", etc.  When you ask so many questions...surprise surprise...you get a lot of answers.  Here are the results:

This is different than our first data analysis with the first assessments, which only showed student name and which reading level they were on.

Now, with lots of information, comes lots more questions because once we teachers knows the information we teachers wants to do something about it all!  We narrowed down patterns, discussed what's most important.   After we decided we couldn't "do it all", we focused on the 80/20 principal of creating goals.  We narrowed down our groups like this:

 I know it's hard for you to relate the data because I've taken out names, but please understand I have to remain respectful and confidential.

What I'd like for you to notice is that now we have two types of groups: guided reading and skills.  Students are fluid through guided reading, and may occur more than once in a skill group.  My team teacher focuses on guided reading and I focus on the skill instruction.  To do this all within our reading block, our reading block schedule had to shift.  We needed time to meet with all of these small groups, conduct whole group lessons, and have time to conference one on one with each student each day.  Based on our data, our students need all of these every day.

So here's what we came up with:

This is a sample of one day's lesson plan for one focus lesson.  We repeat this same process 5 times (except the flashback only occurs during this rotation) during our reading block of 2 hours.  Another note, while the guided reading time is set of 20 minutes, the skill group is set to 10 which frees me up to do 2 conferences.  If you do the math,  that means we are counting every...single....minute.  We and our students are strapped to the clock.  There cannot be any loss of instructional time.  

My team teacher and I are exhausted at the end, and planning for all of this makes our brain hurt.  BUT, we both look at each other every day that we've switched to this schedule and say..."wow, we got a lot done today.  I know what I need to do next." I've never felt more intentional or more reflective than I do with this system we have put in place.  I feel like we're looking at EACH student every day.  

How does this relate to my project?

The immediate action that I felt as I put the pieces together of my questions and discovering my what and why is first and foremost how this relates to my project.   Now, I see what intentional planning looks like.  Now, I feel what it is to look at individual results and set goals.  Now, I have experienced a new level of coplanning and coteaching.

With all of this action, I still have many many questions to my project.  I still want to know the initial problem and how to address it.  I think that the system we've created now is a higher level of the systems that were already in place, and will help the answer to the problem but are not the answer.

So....more reflection, more research, more action.  We're moving in the right direction...I think.

Questions leading to research

The (late 😥) Yogi Berra said, "If you don't know where you're going, you might not get there." This is how I'm feeling at this stage in my project.  I'm trying to decide where I'm going and what questions I need to focus on to get there.  

So far, here are my thoughts on paper...

Completely clear, right??

My first response to research was to simply check the research I had done.  What is happening in our building and what have I read so far? Looking at just this helped to narrow in on a few ideas, but ultimately led to more questions.  

After sitting with these ideas and letting them roll around for awhile, I've decided to categorize the questions. Maybe this will help me narrow in on my research? Maybe this will point me exactly to what I need to focus on in my action steps?

So here they are....

Is there a pattern in need for growth in all schools with our percentage of free/reduced lunch?  Is there something we can do before our students enter our building? Is there something schools similar to us are doing that creates growth?

Is there something we can do at school that were not doing? What systems support most growth? What do kids think? What do teachers think? 

Are parents a key player in making this much growth? Do we need them in the building? Do we increase communication? Do we share resources? Would the community be a necessary resource? Are parents and community so necessary that we give all effort here, or would it be ok to spend most energy on our school day and "our circle of influence"?

 

Although it may look like I'm still completely lost, I don't feel that way.  I

feel accomplished because I feel like I've at least narrowed the questions down.  I know what I'm looking for in research.  

 My team coaches are promising that we will narrow the topic on our met webinar. I'm really looking forward to that webinar...😄

And of course, anyone reading this that knows an answer- I'll take one!

First CTEPS

First of all, my first CTEPS experience was more than I can ever describe.  Make sure you do visit www.kycteps.org to learn more about their message and plans for us.  Second of all, to say that I left our first face to face meeting "inspired" would be an understatement, but I'm not sure of another word!  When we, teachers, are invited to three days worth of training (and yes, that's three full days with a 30 minute lunch at our table each day) we can sometimes look forward to the city we will be visiting, the people we will meet, the hotel, the nights without our normal responsibilities, and maybe some extra sleep!  This, however, turned out to be the BEST event I've attended...something that I only wanted to leave so that I process all that I'd learned.  I cannot express my gratitude for the time and effort placed into making this experience special, inspiring, informative, and something that will make a difference for kids.  It has literally taken me an entire week to digest all the information because I can't help but immediately (try to) apply what I had learned.

During our weekend together, we worked on identifying our project, what are "why" is, and pinpointing the actual problem.  To me this is all still very blurry, but I'm moving in a direction that is focused on making two year's growth in our young readers.  This involves trying to determine why we need so much growth, what are our barriers, what are the systems that are working/not working, and why are those systems successful/not successful, and how to make changes one classroom at a time until we make school wide gains.    When I get to work in a school and school system that is full of administrative support and THE BEST teachers, I know the problem is a system or something that we can pinpoint and fix to make the gains we need; because ultimately, a good teacher makes all the difference and we already have that.  

This is such an exciting and important process.  My "why" is that the kids I work with deserve this attention and 100% of them deserve to leave our school reading on grade level...no matter what.  The rest of this blog will be my messy reflections hopefully full of pictures and videos and my organized chaotic thinking on these questions and my experience throughout the CTEPS process.  As I share information, ask questions, look at research, or sound completely lost.... I would love to hear any ideas.  Your time is greatly appreciated.

So, here we go!  This is the beginning!