RED 6540 Assessment in Literacy: Blog Post 3 (weeks 8-10)

Many schools have more recently reorganized their schedules to allow for professional learning communities (PLCs) to allow for common planning among teachers (Boudett, 2014).  Making time to meet in PLCs can be challenging, but meeting once or twice a month as a team with an agenda will be helpful.  In my experience, it can be challenging to bring everything together from the various members to create a collaborative plan to move forward.  Too often we are working so hard independently, and we forget we are all working towards the same goal of students moving successfully through school.

Some tips for creating an effective data display include the following:

• providing a complete title
• name of assessment and subject
• what grade level was tested?
• name of school
• dates of assessments
• how many students were tested?

• chart should be simple and easy to read
• chart style should be appropriate for intended purpose
• space and color used well
• appropriate font size
• appropriate labels included
• data-point values (Boudett, 2014).

Just get started.  Sounds simple enough, right?  Often times, the idea of needing to be sure you include everything can be enough to completely overwhelm even the most level headed person.  It is not possible to include every single thing when digging into data.  Take one problem and work through that.  Often that one simple problem will address many other related problems.  The important thing to remember is to just get started (Boudett, 2014).

"The problem of practice is directly related to the learner-centered problem; based on evidence found when examining instruction; within the school's control' a statement about practice, not a question; and specific and small" (Boudett, 2014).

Four main tasks to help investigate instruction and articulate problem of practice:

1. Link learning and teaching
2. Develop skill of observing practice
3. Develop shared understanding of effective practice
4. Analyze current practice (Boudett, 2014).

Developing an action plan is not a singular item to be done.  In fact, it is one step in a process.  Plan, solve, look back on plan and results, understand and learn, and then plan once again.  This should be a part of a continuous cycle.

It is imperative for school leaders to "communicate the action plan clearly, integrate the plan into the ongoing work of the school a,d use teams for support and internal accountability" (Boudett, 2014).  Everyone needs to be on the same page and working towards accomplishing the main objective.



References

Boudett, K. P., City, E. A., Murnane, R. J. (2014). Data Wise. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard
     Education Press.