Learning: Search the Twitter hashtag #21daysSDW

sbrownehr.com

Feedback is a focus during our next #21daysSDW and so is conferring. What if you changed your feedback loop to include your learners? Have you asked them what they think? Have you asked them to make their thinking visible through writing, discussion, questioning, or the ever so familiar emoticons?

In the book, Make One Change, Dan Rothstein argues that we should be teaching the skill of question formulation to all students. We should do it to promote excellence and we should do it to promote equity.
Both are achievable.

Learning how to ask questions leads to improved learning outcomes, greater student engagement, and more ownership of the learning process. This book asks us to make one simple change in our regular, purposeful practice and planning; to deliberately teach students how to ask their own questions.

The rigorous process of learning to develop and ask questions offers students the invaluable opportunity to become independent thinkers and self-directed learners. This also pushes our practices as teachers, from the proficient category according to Danielson's component 3b: Questioning and Discussion Techniques, to the distinguished category. As the teacher, you are leading a process in which your students will be thinking and working by asking their own questions, rather than responding to the ones that you ask. Students do the formulating of many questions, initiate topics, and make unsolicited contributions.



Teaching students to formulate their own questions, empowers them to be responsible for their own learning and also helps them refine a skill that has direct practical application in their daily lives. We can take action today to improve the quality of feedback and discussion in every classroom by teaching all students how to ask their own questions. Students will improve their discovery, engagement, and achievement!

#21daysSDW Conferring and Feedback Challenge- Teacher Leader Guest Blog Post

For the next  #21daysSDW is conducting a challenge to see how much we can positively affirm the focus of conferring and learner feedback in our classrooms across the district. We hope you join the #21daysSDW challenge as you focus your efforts on this high leverage practice.  A special thank you to Krista Krauter for supplying the leadership blog post for this week.

Conferring in FLIGHT

Submitted by: Krista Krauter, FLIGHT Academy Advisor

One unique aspect for students in the FLIGHT Academy, is that they are required to attend a weekly conference with their advisor. Each advisor in FLIGHT has approximately 30 students (10 from each grade level) that he/she is responsible for. We meet with this group of students in the morning for our morning meeting, for language workshop, at the end of the day for community circle, and for weekly conferences. The advisor also serves as the primary contact for parents and other teachers at Horning. As we are now into FLIGHT’s third year, we have found the the most important thing we do is conferencing with our students.

Each FLIGHT advisor teaches “face-to-face” seminars every other day, which allows us to be able to conference with students on the days we aren’t doing the lead teaching. After students have planned their calendars with their elective courses and FLIGHT seminars, they find a 15 minute chunk of time when they can schedule a weekly conference with their advisor. This is a very special 15 minutes that each student has to meet privately with their advisor to discuss the progress they have made on their learning plan, to set new goals for the next week, and to bring up any troubles they are having with content material.

The advisor fills out a conference log at each conference. We record the progress that is being made in their core content areas (math, humanities, and science) and we also discuss any projects they are currently working on and how their elective classes are going. This is also an opportunity to discuss how the kids are feeling. (Be the first to say to Mr. Wegner in person, "Tell me the story again about what you would do for your kids at Christmas time!" - for a prize.) We want to know if they’re doing too much or too little homework, how their stress level is, what they’re doing for the weekend, etc. After the log is complete, each student and their parents get an email that summarizes what was discussed at the conference. We have received a lot of nice feedback from parents because they appreciate being informed weekly about how their child is doing.

The students really look forward to their conference time. Sometimes we miss a conference day if we’re on a field trip or a teacher is sick. When this happens, students often will ask if the conference can be rescheduled because they have so much to share with us. I look forward to my conference days every week because of the relationship that I am building with each one of my students. I enjoy having the time to help them with their struggles and celebrate their successes. I also feel like I get to know their families so well because of the weekly communication. Conferencing with students help them see how much I care. We are partners in their education and I will support them 100%.

The Power of Student-Led Conferences

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L3: Cultivating Learning

With our focus on personalized learning elements for each student in the School District of Waukesha, what about the adults in our system?

In order for professional learning to be meaningful, we need to honor choice, transparency and reflection throughout the learning process.

(n2growth.com)

Choice should reflect a mix to fully meet both the needs of the adult learner and the system in which the learner exists. Personalized does not mean isolated, and it is through transparency that the most valuable personalized connections of all are made. By making the context of the learning and the choices within that context transparent, an adult learner has the autonomy to learn in ways that will accelerate individual growth and enhance the coherence of the entire system. This is the goal of professional learning in the School District of Waukesha.

Self-reflection is the last critical foundational component to help focus and look deeply and our practices (L2) and ensure excellence (L4) as we develop our next steps.

Cultivating professional learning (L3) cannot be done in a vacuum. How are you making choices to help support your own high quality practices? Together, we are working to ensure that high levels of learning happen for everyone in our entire system.

Scaling Personalized Learning

As our @WaukeshaSchools continue to grow our personalized learning opportunities across the system, what are some essential conditions necessary to scale this work?

* Teachers should provide students with multiple pathways to meeting standards that should be informed by real-time data on student performance, interests and goals. This is grounded in our Waukesha for Learning principles, our use of PLC data during the ASW process, and student learning profiles that target individual goals and growth.
* Instructional practices should be focused on teaching students how to learn. This is evident in our Gradual Release of Responsibility model throughout our classrooms.
* Schools should cultivate learning environments, both inside and outside the school walls.

How are these essential conditions described above being cultivated in your classroom, in your school? In order to scale personalized learning, we must work together to overcome the barriers of a system that was designed for a time that has long since passed. How are you growing some of these personalized learning elements? The time is now.