Calling all instructional coaches! Indulge me for just a few minutes to think about how you organize your professional learning sessions with teachers.
Lately, writing assessment has been on my mind-schools have asked me for support around writing assessment (webinars, after-school sessions, you name it). It was time to organize my thinking in order to support others in their own learning around writing assessment-that’s always the tricky part, right? Organizing and giving structure to our thinking on a topic can be challenging!
Where to start? I began by using my notebook, brightly colored Post-it notes, and a black magic marker to determine some of the big important questions about writing assessment. Here are the ones I came up with (of course, there are probably other questions also):
- What do I need to know about student writing?
- How can I gather information about student writing?
- How can I use this information to plan for individual students?
- How can I use this information to plan my instruction?
Then, I began exploring some of the first question: what do teachers need to know about student writing in order to guide their instruction? This, of course, led to more questions (and I am sure you can think of more as well):
- Do my students have age-appropriate knowledge of skills and conventions?
- Are they able to use “voice” when they write?
- How do they get ideas for writing?
- What motivates them to write?
- Can they organize their thinking?
This was a good place to start. Then, I organized these questions into two categories: questions that can be answered by reading students’ writing and questions that require conversations with students to find out more.
Student writing can tell us-
- Do my students have age-appropriate knowledge of skills and conventions?
- Are they able to use “voice” when they write?
- Can they organize their thinking?
Conversations with students can tell us-
- How do they get ideas for writing?
- What motivates them to write?
- Can they organize their thinking?
Finally, I began thinking about the suite of writing assessments we use in Being a Writer. And to help me better understand these assessments and how they support instruction, I took my Post-its to my wall (for more space!) to categorize the assessments based on their formative or summative nature.
As I was sorting and thinking about our assessments, I really wanted to talk and collaborate with others. I thought that several of the assessments could fit into both categories (summative and formative) and I wanted to talk with other educators to get their thoughts.
After going through this process of asking questions and categorizing information, I now have several different ideas and activities for my professional development sessions with teachers:
- I can start our time together with the questions on the pink Post-it notes above and let the teachers engage in the same thinking I just went through. Clearly there are some productive places for teachers to work together and have conversations about their thinking!
- I can provide an opportunity to analyze student work obtained from some of the assessments above.
- And, finally, we can discuss instructional implications and designing a lesson based on some of our conclusions after reviewing the assessments.
I am curious: What are some strategies you use when you are planning for professional learning experiences? What other ideas for professional learning do you have for me?