Literacy Training Questions

This Thursday during early-release we will be meeting in departments to look at student work using the Tuning Protocol.  This is a big and bold step for our school; many people are naturally a little anxious.  I’d like to quickly address some of the major questions that have emerged in the hopes of reducing your stress somewhat. 

 

I’m a “presenting teacher”—what do I have to do? 

Come to the meeting with 3 pieces of student work that have been photocopied for members of your group.  You will begin the protocol by describing this work to your group members.  The “VHS Student Work Cover Sheet” that you’ve been given has questions on it that will prepare you to provide a clear, complete description of the assignment, so that your group members have a proper context for looking at the student work.  You will answer clarifying questions your group members might have.  Then you will listen as your group members discuss and analyze the work.  Finally you will respond to what you’ve heard, and orally reflect on what you’ve learned.

We recommend that you limit yourself to description of the assignment in your opening 5 minutes, and do not attempt to analyze the work for your group members.  If you evaluate or analyze the student work for your group members, it might discourage them from pursuing their own independent evaluation/analysis.  They will tend to want to agree with you, or at least not disagree with you.  Their discussion of the work will be richer and more useful to you if they are speaking candidly and independently, and not parroting your own views.

The protocol can take place for your student work even if you don’t fill out the cover sheet. (It’s very important that you bring the photocopied student work, however).  Please try to find a few minutes to prepare yourself to clearly describe this assignment to your peers if you can’t find the time to do the cover sheet.

What’s with the paperwork—is it going to be collected? 

The cover sheet and the protocol worksheets (attached to the student work) provide an excellent record of the process of looking at student work. This record can be useful for individual teachers as artifacts of professional growth; it can be useful to departments as a log of department conversations that could lead to greater consistency in expectations and assignments; and it can be useful to the school as evidence of professional collaboration and school improvement (which is one of the things that WASC will want to see).

This work will not be collected on Thursday.  However, we are asking those groups who are willing to voluntarily turn this work in to their department chairs (who will give it to me).  I will photocopy it and return it to you immediately.

What does this have to do with literacy? 

Evaluations of last semester’s literacy training indicated that teachers wanted more support & emphasis on actually implementing the literacy strategies in their classrooms; also, teachers expressed a desire to work with other teachers in their departments. The protocol satisfies both of those needs.  Ideally (from a literacy perspective), the student work you bring to share will be “literacy-related”—work that was done to support students’ reading comprehension skills in your subject area.  However, our overriding concern is that the protocol be personally useful and relevant to you, and that the student work you share be work you personally feel is important and want to improve.  So you have permission to “separate” the protocol from the literacy training. 

Please let me know if you have any additional questions or concerns about this training.

Brad