The workshop was presented to my 6-8 grade teachers (who I must admit were an excellent audience). As I am still new to the district, I decided to choose a vague topic - Best Instructional Practices - allowing me to briefly touch on various areas while gauging understanding and need among the participants. During our time together, I presented on the following:
1. Tiered Classroom Model (whole group, small group, and intervention / challenge)
After discussing the three tiers and identifying how much of each class period should be designated for each one, teachers then worked in grade level / content areas to idenify what resources were available within each tier. The one area that most teachers identified as a need was small group resources and ideas for implementation. I have found, in all of my experiences, that one of the reasons teachers might be hesitant to putting students in small groups is the feeling that there is a loss of power and/or off-task behavior. As two teachers were talking about one of the forms I had given them, I asked the rest of the group "Should I feel the need as the presenter to stop them from talking?" Everyone awkwardly laughed and the two teachers who were talking immediately began to explain. I told them it wasn't necessary, because I was proving a point that not all talk or side conversation should be seen as a negative. Let's keep things real, have you ever looked at teachers sitting in a professional development session or faculty meeting? There's side conversations, staff sit towards the back of the room, phones might even be out responding to texts or emails. I'm not saying this is wrong - simply acknowledging that it happens and it doesn't represent disrespect but possibly how that individual learns. A great book that I read in 2010 was Donalyn Miller's The Book Whisperer. In one section of the book, she discusses why you shouldn't stop a student who leans over to say something to his peer during silent reading, because this might be how the student learns and processes the information.
2. RTI Model When presenting this toppic, I focused on how the model could be implemented as a classroom teacher - There are many variations to the RTI Model. As a classroom teacher, I was responsible for servicing students in all three tiers of the RTI Model. The RTI Model is set up similarly to the Tiered Classroom Model, and the purpose of showing both of these diagrams is representative that every classroom should be broken into appropriately leveled parts based on students needs and abilities. During our workshop time together, I presented a topic in whole group (Tier 1), I then had them break into their subject areas to identify different parts / share out (Tier 2), and finally as they worked in groups I took questions and concerns regarding individual classes (Tier 3). When presenting, I believe it is a great opportunity to model what my expectations are and how they can be achieved.
Document, document, document...... Without proper documentation, the interventions you apply will mean absolutely NOTHING! The most essential component to effectively running any program is proper documentation. During the presentation, I stressed to teachers that if they referred a student to Child Study Team without properly documenting interventions, it would most likely be kicked back to the school to fully implement and document the interventions being applied. For many, I see that they are doing great things in their classrooms, but not documenting everything they are doing - essentially they aren't taking credit. One form that I provided during the workshop was a simple anecdotal notes sheet broken into two columns (Date and Notes). I used to keep one of these for each student in my class. This made it simple for me to have flexible groups (simply move the students form as needed), it was useful during parent teacher conferences, it allowed me to communicate with interventionists who came into my classroom, and finally it was my documentation of interventions / needs of the specific student when gathering documentation. When looking at groups of students, the form below is something I had created as a Teacher Leader to document student concerns (all students with a C or below would be placed on the form). This was beneficial in a middle school setting, because I would have each teacher (from each content area) add their class list to the main form. This allowed us as a grade level team to identify those students not performing in one subject versus those students not performing in many subjects. In addition to properly documenting the interventions being put in place, it is essential to keep the parents informed of what is happening through the process (outside of mailed home progress reports and report cards). Effectively working with parents is a whole other professional development topic that is necessary to bring home and school efforts together. The following document below outlines: Name, Grade, Teacher, Parent Contact, Reason for Low Performance, and Interventions. I found it beneficial to have this form filled out at the mid point of a marking period and to revisit the form again at the end of the marking period.
Idea #1 - I shared with them Comprehension Tic Tac Toe (an idea I had taken from my wife who teaches 3rd grade). The concept of this activity is coming up with 9 different assignments. Students are then given the choice of completing any of the 3 assignments that would give them Tic Tac Toe. I extended this by sharing with them that I would have the students use the same form and for the next assignment they would have to select a different direction than they had the first time.
Idea #2 - My Fortune Teller Project was always popular among my students. One day in my 6th grade ELA class I saw a student hiding a fortune teller under the desk that they had brought into my room from the cafeteria. I took the fortune teller, and looking at it came up with a great project idea. The next day I had students make fortune tellers and for each section of the fortune teller, I applied a different skill that had been taught in the past weeks. Students LOVED the project and I was getting what I needed (something to show that they understood what I had taught).
When looking at the topic of Best Instructional Practices, it goes on and on. The purpose of the professional development I provided was to simply expose and discuss the starting point, which I decided to focus on Classroom Setup (Tiered Classroom Model), Interventions (RTI Model - modified based on specifics of school), and Small Group (Tier 2) lesson ideas that teachers would be able to walk away and implement.
Thank you for reading, and please feel free to comment below with your ideas or suggestions based on the topics discussed.
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