The Write to Read, The Right to Succeed

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The Write to Read, The Right to Succeed

• Adolescent Literacy Initiative
• Nodaway Valley

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The Write to Read, The Right to Succeed

• 6-12 Literacy Initiative
• Supports Learning in All Content Areas
• Sustained Effort - 5th Year
• Technical Support - Dr. Emily Calhoun
• Instructional Strategies - Grounded in Research

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Our Philosophy

• High Expectations
• True terror is to wake up one morning and
  discover that your high school class is running
  the country.
• Collaborative Leadership
• Leadership is everywhere or nowhere.
• Focus on Instruction
• Use Data to Make Decisions

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Why focus on instruction?

• The evidence is indisputable. Mortimore and
  Sammons (1987) found that teaching had 6 to 10
  times as much impact on achievement as all other
  factors combined.
• Schmoker, Mike. Results Now. Association for
  Supervision and Curriculum Development. 2006. pp.
  9 10.

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Why instruction continued

• Ferguson (1991) and Snow et al. (1989) found
  that nothing was as powerful as the quality of
  the teacher in predicting the achievement of
  children. Neither parents nor socioeconomic
  status of the family were as powerful as good
  instruction in shaping the academic futures of
  students."
• Richard Allington, What Really Matters for
  Struggling Readers , p. 112. Longman Press. 2001

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Why literacy? I teach math.

• Literacy affects all students and all teachers
• School data indicated our greatest area of need
  was reading
• Students can more ably access the content if
  theyre better readers
• All disciplines have their own vocabulary
• All disciplines have their own language
• Students must understand and learn to write the
  content of historians, scientists,
  mathematicians, economists, consumer scientists,
  mechanics, etc.

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The Write to Read, The Right to Succeed Outcomes
for Students

• To engage with the curriculum, curricular
  materials, and other media to support current and
  future learning.
• To improve reading, writing, and content area
  performance on achievement measures.

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The Write to Read, The Right to SucceedOutcomes
for Staff

• To strengthen or build a professional learning
  community around common goals, shared effort, and
  the continuous study and use of results.
• To expand or refine instructional strategies
  about reading and writing in order to support
  students learning within each content area.

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Instructional Strategies

• Quick Write (.23)
• Thinking About and Responding to Assignments
• TARAs (.67)
• Vocabulary
• Explaining Words
• Student Self Selection
• Explicit Instruction (.82)

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Quick Write

• Write to learn activity
• Builds and reinforces content learning
• Use three kinds of knowledge
• Declarative - Asks What
• Procedural - Asks How
• Conditional - Asks When or Why
• Focus - Does the writing reflect a clear
  understanding of the content?

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Thinking About and Responding to Assignments
(TARA)

• Teacher selects topic or idea important to
  discipline
• Teacher writes a prompt and response to topic or
  idea
• Teacher shares thinking - content and process
• Teachers give students a similar prompt and ask
  them to write a response and their thinking
• Students share their thinking with their peers.

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Explicit Instruction In Reading Comprehension
Strategies in Content Areas

• Explanation of strategy
• Read aloud
• Model / Demonstration
• Opportunity for practice and coaching by the
  teacher
• Monitoring for transfer (evaluate student
  learning to decide if another lesson is needed)

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Training Components of Effective Staff Development
Joyce, B. Showers, B (2002). Student
Achievement Through Staff
Development,
Alexandria, VA, ASCD.
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Framework

• Leadership
• Clear Expectations
• Collaboration Time
• Books
• Data Analysis and Use

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Leadership Team

• Who
• Staff from from various content areas
  representing 6-12 (8 teachers), administrators
  (2), media specialist, content provider
• Responsibilities
• Study data (analyze logs, student achievement)
• Plan and lead professional development
• Believe in and support the initiative
• Lead collaboration (small groups of 2-4 teachers)
• Learn the strategies at an accelerated rate

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Leadership Team

• Why
• Sustains the initiative (teacher/administrative
  turnover will not affect our work)
• Gives ownership to the teachers
• Shared workload
• Research indicates success of the initiative is
  contingent upon strong leadership - there is
  strength in numbers

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Clear Expectations

• Set in two ways
• Administration outlines acceptable implementation
  levels
• Underlying expectation that non-implementors are
  a minority
• Principals are held to the same expectations as
  the teachers for implementation
• Expectations are tied to student achievement
  through the sharing of theory - strategies are
  used to teach curriculum
• Expectations are constantly revisited

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Collaborative time

• Must be built into the schedule
• Mandated attendance
• Collaborative logs are used
• Lead team members are facilitators
• Used to plan, write, share, rehearse lessons and
  study student data
• Time given for collaboration during staff
  development

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Books

• Allocated resources for classroom and library
  collection
• Trade books need to support content
• Media Specialist provides support in selection
  for content areas
• Utilize all quality printed material (internet,
  periodicals, manuals, etc)
• Students should provide input into book selection
• Increase time that students and staff read
  quality material

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On-going Data Collection and Analysis

• Student Responses - Daily
• Plan next lesson based on what the teacher learns
  from student responses
• 3 Categories (Cognitive Control, Good Progress,
  Struggling)
• Teacher Implementation Data - Semi-monthly
• Plan professional development based on what we
  learn from the implementation data
• Professional Development Feedback - Monthly
• Reading Rate, Fluency, Comprehension -
  Semi-annually
• Standardized Test Data
• Student Writing Sample (UCLA Scale) - Semi
  annually
• Other data as necessary - classroom book
  collection, SSR

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Questions?

• Contact Information
• Doug Glackin [phone]
• dglackin_at_nod-valley.k12.ia.us
• Roger Raum [phone]
• rraum_at_nod-valley.k12.ia.us
• Lead Team Ruth Avazian, Janelle Luther, Brenda
  Thaden, Marcia Gross, Norma McCutchan, Jarrod
  ODonnell, Angie Shindelar, Tammy Walk, Doug
  Hatch
• Nodaway Valley Community School

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Results of this initiative

• Roger - go to Impact folder