Tracking Focal Student Progress

Mills Teacher Scholars

Tracking Focal Student Progress

March 2013

My area of Inquiry/Inquiry Question is: The focus of my inquiry is to support reading comprehension for the English Language Learners in my classroom through the Teacher’s College Reading Workshop model. I would like my students to be able to think deeply about their reading and understand their independent reading books in new, more interesting and varied ways that help them understand deeper meanings and themes within each book. To get them to a place where they can do that with their independent reading books, I am specifically focusing on student comprehension during read alouds where I can scaffold their reading and responses.

My routine data source is: Stop & Jots from Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

Demonstrating Success: Reflect on what evidence you see in the routine data source that tells you how your student is or is not progressing on the indicators.

Indicators	Student Name Luz	Student Name Bianca
I: Students can retell accurate information from the text.	☐Met ☐Not met  ☐ Partially Evidence/How can you tell? 1. Because Fudge swolowed Peters turtle and Peter felt sad. 2. This event actually happened in the book, but Luz only wrote one retell.	☐Met ☐Not met  ☐ Partially Evidence/How can you tell? 1. Because Fudge is waving at a croud of people. 2. Because Fudge is getting an operation. These events actually happened in the book.
II: Students’ own thought or idea about the characters or the story line is connected to their retell.	☐Met ☐Not met  ☐ Partially Evidence/How can you tell? 1.  Because Fudge swolowed Peters turtle and Peter felt sad. Then I think fudge wil sorry to Peter for eating Peters turtle. 2. This prediction makes sense within the context of the story and her retell, but Luz only wrote one retell & thought.	☐Met ☐Not met  ☐ Partially Evidence/How can you tell? 1.  Because Fudge is waving at a croud of people. Then I think Peter is thinking that Fudge didn’t swallow a turtle. 2.  Because Fudge is getting an operation. Then I think dribble is going to get out. These connections & predictions make sense within the context of the story and her retell.
III: Students’ own thought shows deeper understanding through connections, predictions, or inferences.	☐Met ☐Not met  ☐ Partially Evidence/How can you tell? 1. Luz’s writing indicates that she’s made a logical prediction based on evidence from the text. I wish she was able to have a more meaningful prediction that led her to a deeper understanding of theme and storyline. 2. Luz only wrote one retell & thought: This makes me question how much she was thinking during the read aloud and how difficult it is for her to listen, think, translate, retell, and write at the same time.	☐Met ☐Not met  ☐ Partially Evidence/How can you tell? 1. Bianca’s writing indicates that she’s made a logical prediction based on evidence from the text. She has either made an inference through character traits or she has made a connection based on previous events in the storyline. 2. Bianca’s writing shows that she’s either made a logical prediction based on evidence from the text.

After my small group discussion, here is what I'm thinking about my students' learning, and about my next steps...

I want to make thinking about reading/books easier for my students. We are about to start a new read aloud book (Charlotte’s Web) and I will make a poster with my class about the characters as they come up in the text. We can map out who the characters are and their character traits, and any big events that involve them and draw out the storyline. I want students to have visual reminders of who the characters are, and what has happened previously in the story, to help support them in thinking deeply about themes, make accurate predictions, interesting connections, and meaningful inferences.

My focal students’ retells have been accurate, but I imagine they would be difficult to understand if I hadn’t been there, reading the same text with them. I understand what was going on because we had a shared experience with the story. I want my students to write responses to the book in a way that their audience can understand what was happening in the text, even if they weren’t reading the same book. Eventually, I want to move my students from writing on these “stop & jot” templates during read alouds to writing on post-its during independent reading time, about their individual books. That means their retells need to be clear and descriptive, to allow someone who didn’t read their book to know if their thought was meaningful. I will model this more often for them, and discuss explicitly what the purpose is.

MTS Blog Post – Looking at Student Work 2/27/2013

-->

MTS Blog Post – Looking at Student Work 2/27/2013

For Luz, when I look at how she did this time on the routine data source, compared to last time, one thing I notice is how she is still not making connections or inferences to the text beyond what is literally there. She is able to cite evidence from the text to support her thinking, writing that “Because Fudge swolowed Peters turtle and Peter felt sad. Then I think fudge wil sorry to Peter for eating Peters turtle.” This shows me that Luz is finding a good stopping point in the text to think, but is using basic comprehension skills such as prediction instead of deeper inferences and thematic thinking like I have been modeling. I don’t see much change in Luz’s work since the last round of data collection.

For Bianca, when I look at how she did this time on the routine data source, compared to last time one thing I notice is that she is continuing to make connections or inferences to the text beyond what is literally there. She is also able to cite evidence from the text to support her thinking, writing that, “Because Fudge is waving at a croud of people, then I think Peter is thinking that Fudge didn’t swallow a turtle.” Bianca consistently cites evidence and makes inferences, and is able to take on a character’s perspective and feelings. She has also been stopping at good places in the text to have a meaningful thought.

Neither student showed much change since the last round of data collection; Luz stayed only partially meeting each indicator, and Bianca stayed stable partially (although much closer to fully) meeting each indicator. I’m not sure why this plateau happened, or how to jump-start growth. We changed the format of the stop & jot note-taking template, to include a portion where students retell what part of the book they stopped at to think, and then what the thought they had was. This seemed to Kate and I to be a more clear and straightforward template, asking students specific information that would support them to stop at meaningful places in the text. Both students were able to do this, but it didn’t necessarily lead them to use a more complex comprehension skill afterward to understand the text more meaningfully. I’d like to figure out how to push their thinking further.

Work in Progress Presentation Notes

Work in Progress Presentation: Guiding Questions

1. What is your area of inquiry? What is your learning goal within this area?

The focus of our inquiry is to support reading comprehension for English Language Learners through the Teacher’s College Reading Workshop model. This is important to us because we deeply believe that this model of teaching reading is effective in affecting love for reading and therefore increases reading skills, and most of our students are English Language Learners, so we need to adapt the program somewhat to support their understanding of complex texts. It is important to us to study our students’ reading comprehension because one of the biggest differences between what second graders are expected to do and what third graders must do is a big switch from learning how to read to reading in order to learn. We need to know that they are thinking about what they are reading, both at an instructional level and, more importantly, independently. Reading can be such an isolating activity and we need to know what they know about what they are reading.

We would like our students to be able to think deeply about their reading and understand their independent reading books in new, more interesting and varied ways that help them understand deeper meanings and themes within each book.

2. What is your routine data source and what are the indicators of success on this routine data source?

Originally our routine data source was post-its that our students had written while reading books at their independent reading level. Our routine data source has changed to “stop and jots” during a read aloud of Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. Our three indicators of success are:

1. Students can make connections or inferences to the text beyond what is literally     there.

2. Students can cite evidence from the text to support their thinking.

3. Students can find an appropriate place in the text to stop and think.

3. What have you learned from looking at your routine data source about your focal students’ thinking? Highlight for us one part of this data that stands out to you. What has surprised you?

For one of our indicators—can students make inferences and/or connections beyond what is literally there—our focal students are making some inferences and connections, but many of them are not very deep. For example, when sentence frames are used to support inference-making and connections, they don’t often relate to the larger theme of the story or chapter. Instead the inferences or connections are often about a not-so-important detail.  For example, one connection that a focal student has attempted to make was: “ME TOO! I also call my mom like Peter.” Another student wrote “ME TOO! My brother also makes a vroom vroom vroom sound.” These feel very superficial.

One part of our data that has been surprising to us is how difficult it is for our students to find appropriate stopping points to have a meaningful thought.  A lot of the time, our students are restating something that we read to them, instead of critically analyzing the text using comprehension skills we have learned and practiced. Other times, our students are “stopping and jotting” and making connections to passing instances (when the boy played with a train), instead of using the connection skills they have to relate to larger feelings or events that would help them more meaningfully understand the story. We noticed these challenges and thought maybe they were occurring because our students were listening to us read aloud to them and they couldn’t write and think about the text being read to them at the same time. Tessa began projecting the book’s text on her document reader while she reads, so that her students could see the text, and refer to it directly when they were writing their stop and jots. We began reading slower, pausing after paragraphs so students would have time to think and begin writing down a thought if they had one. However, we don’t want to make their stopping choices for them, and don’t want to have everyone stopping and jotting in the same places, or get disengaged from the storyline if we are pausing between paragraphs. How do we support our students to learn to independently stop and think at appropriate, meaningful places in the text?

4. What changes (large or small) have you made and do you plan to make to your teaching as a result of what you have learned about these students?

Changes Implemented:

·      Moved from post-its in independent reading books to stop & jot worksheets for shared read aloud books.

·      Sentence frames already printed on stop & jot worksheet for easy access.

·      Read alouds include purposeful pauses.

·      Projecting read aloud text sometimes.

Next Steps:

·      Pull out parts from text and teach what is a meaningful stopping and thinking point.

·      Highlight student work that was done successfully.

5. What have you noticed about your focal students’ learning progress in relation to these indicators?

What We’ve Noticed:

·      Students are choosing and thinking about random details rather than big picture themes or ideas. Students don’t know how to identify meaningful stopping & thinking places.

·      Even with sentence starters, student ideas are not coherent or relevant.

·      The process of writing about reading/thinking is challenging for some students. Is this due to translating while listening, lack of visual input, lack of basic comprehension skills, or lack of basic writing skills?

Questions:

·      How do we know what students are thinking while they’re listening to the read aloud? Are they able to connect details and hold the story line/themes?

·      How do you record your thoughts in a coherent way?

o   Presenting your ideas in a way that truly get your thoughts across.

·      Balance between teaching reading basics (fluency, phonics, etc.) and more complex comprehension tasks.

6. Please bring six copies of your table of indicators of success, and six copies of one example of your routine data source for one focal student – you will use these to help your colleagues at the work-in-progress talk to be able to see the data and to give feedback in making sense of it. 

Tracking Focal Student Progress

Mills Teacher Scholars

Tracking Focal Student Progress

January 2013

My area of Inquiry/Inquiry Question is: The focus of my inquiry is to support reading comprehension for the English Language Learners in my classroom through the Teacher’s College Reading Workshop model. I am specifically focusing on student comprehension during read alouds.

My routine data source is: Student thinking conveyed through “stop and jot” notes which utilize sentence frames to help support phrasing and thinking.

Demonstrating Success: Reflect on what evidence you see in the routine data source that tells you how your student is or is not progressing on the indicators.

Indicators	Student Name Luz 2/6/2013	Student Name Bianca 2/6/2013
I: Students can make connections or inferences to the text beyond what is literally there.	☐Met ☐Not met  ☐ Partially Evidence/How can you tell? “The character Peter is feeling sad because maybe they don’t care about him.” “It seems like Peter is sad and mad because he think’s that fudge is going to be famouse.”	☐Met ☐Not met  ☐ Partially Evidence/How can you tell? “Peter is jealous because Mr. Venson choosed Fudge to ride the toddle bike in the comershal channel.” “ME TOO! I can relate to the character Fudge because my brother wants the best thing first than the next thing they are going to give him.” “I wonder if fudge is going to do something wrong because he is so litte to be in a comershal channel.”
II: Students can cite evidence from the text to support their thinking.	☐Met ☐Not met  ☐ Partially Evidence/How can you tell? “It seems like Peter is sad and mad because he think’s that fudge is going to be famouse.”	☐Met ☐Not met  ☐ Partially Evidence/How can you tell? “It seems like peter is going to have an Idea because Fudge is going to ride the toddle bike in the comirshal.” “Peter is jealous because Mr. Venson choosed Fudge to ride the toddle bike in the comershal channel.” “ME TOO! I can relate to the character Fudge because my brother wants the best thing first than the next thing they are going to give him.” “I wonder if fudge is going to do something wrong because he is so litte to be in a comershal channel.”
III: Students can find an appropriate place in the text to stop and think.	☐Met ☐Not met  ☐ Partially Evidence/How can you tell? “The character Peter is feeling sad because maybe they don’t care about him.” “It seems like Peter is sad and mad because he think’s that fudge is going to be famouse.”	☐Met ☐Not met  ☐ Partially Evidence/How can you tell? “Peter is jealous because Mr. Venson choosed Fudge to ride the toddle bike in the comershal channel.” “ME TOO! I can relate to the character Fudge because my brother wants the best thing first than the next thing they are going to give him.” “I wonder if fudge is going to do something wrong because he is so litte to be in a comershal channel.”

Looking at Student Work

I am looking at work from three of my focal students (one was absent the day we conducted this assignment). The work I am looking has three parts. I have post-its from my Reading Workshop mini-lesson, where I chose the stopping place from a familiar read aloud book and provided a required sentence frame for students to use to respond to the text. I also have post-its from the same lesson, when students were directed to use the same sentence frame for their own independent and leveled book, but they could choose the stopping and thinking place. Additionally, I have a worksheet that each student filled out while listening to a read aloud I did. There are four sections of this worksheet, each one with a different generic sentence frame and lines for writing. Students were directed to listen to the read aloud and if they had a thought during the story, they could stop and jot their thinking down using one of the sentence frames – whichever one was most appropriate for their thinking at the time. I told students they needed to fill in at least two of the four boxes, to show me that they were using their minds while I was reading.

My indicators of success for this data source are that students are able to find a place in the text that makes sense to “stop and jot,” and can use the sentence frame to coherently express their thinking. Basically, my students will be successful if they are able to consistently and independently write post-its that show evidence that they thought deeply about the story/text/character(s), beyond what is literally written in the text. To be successful at this, students will need to think more deeply about their story/text on their own and cite evidence to support their thinking.

When I look at my focal students' post-it work I notice that, for the first indicator, my focal student "L" is only sometimes able to find places in the text that make sense to stop and jot. In her independent reading, she is able to form a theory and write about it, but is not citing specific evidence in the text to show me where in the text she had the idea. However, for the second indicator, she has been successful; she was able to independently write a post-it that used the provided sentence frame and explained her ideas. During my read aloud, L’s comments are not deep thinking. The text stated that the character woke up many times over the night and was not sleeping well in his new bed. L wrote, “I wonder if Fudge sleep’s good on his new bed.” This makes me think she wasn’t listening for paragraph pauses and was not thinking critically about what she heard in the text – maybe she wrote a comment in one of the boxes because she felt like she had to, even though she didn’t have a truly deep thought. Or maybe she didn’t hear everything I read because she was thinking while I was reading out loud? This makes me think that maybe I should project my read aloud books while I’m reading, so that the students can follow along, see the paragraph/chapter breaks themselves, which could help them understand when to stop and jot independently. I feel like this changes the mood of the read aloud lesson period, but maybe I could do this just some of the time to help scaffold their understanding?

Think Sheet 12/11/2012

1. What is the focus of your inquiry and why is this important to you?

The focus of my inquiry is to support reading comprehension for the English Language Learners in my classroom through the Teacher’s College Reading Workshop model. This is important to me because I deeply believe that this model of teaching reading is effective in affecting love for reading and therefore increases reading skills, and 24 of my 26 students are English Language Learners, so I need to adapt the program somewhat to support their understanding of complex texts. One of the big differences between what I expected these same students to do and think about while reading second grade material last year and what I am expecting them to do and think about this year in third grade is that they need to read more independently and truly “read to learn” new information (as opposed to “learn to read” like they were focused on in previous grade levels).

2. What classroom data are you planning to use for your routine data source to see how students are (or are not) progressing towards this goal? [For example, Kimme used her weekly weekend journals that students wrote each Monday after a writing mini-lesson].

I am going to use student post-its documenting their thinking during independent and whole-class reading as my primary data source. Students write post-its during the Reading Workshop mini-lesson based on a structured sentence frame that I teach them that day, using a whole class read aloud text as their content, at a stopping point that I have decided for them. Then, during independent reading time, they write post-its using the same sentence frame for what they are finding in books at their independent reading levels. For these post-its, students have to choose the stopping points where they will think deeply about their reading and then write. I can use the post-its for assessment purposes of how they understand the teaching point, as well as apply it during guided and independent reading routines.

3. Take some time to look at the routine data source for 1-2 focal students.  What would indicate if a student was successful? What were you hoping to see?

Write 3-4 indicators of success to meet the learning goal. [For example, Kimme decided that to be successful in their summary writing, students would: have one developed idea about their weekend; this central idea must be clearly stated at beginning of entry; have at least 3 details that are relevant to developing the main idea; be written in complete sentences;  have proper capitalization/sentence punctuation]

In order to be successful in post-it writing (and therefore, successfully comprehending their reading), students need to be able to independently think deeply beyond the surface level about their book using a variety of strategies that I have taught and write these thoughts down on their post-its. In order to do this, students also need to know how to independently find a good stopping point in their reading to “stop, think, and jot” – this has proven extremely difficult for most of my students.

4.     At the end of the year what is the learning goal that you would like your focal students to reach? [For example, Kimme wanted her students to be able to write a summary, which she defined as using relative details to support a central idea.]

I would like my students to be able to think deeply about their reading and understand their independent reading books in new, more interesting and varied ways that help them understand deeper meanings and themes within each book.

  

5. What I am thinking now:

I’m thinking that I will conduct Read Alouds more frequently than I have been, and stopping after every paragraph (or so) and have students decide if they have a thought about what we just read. If they do, they can write about it, and I will continue reading. I think this will help support my students to find good stopping & jotting places in their reading, since the content will be more difficult and interesting to them, yet scaffolded so they can access it. I may also teach some explicit “when to stop and think” lessons.

I need more time for ELA instruction! They need so much: fluency, partner reading, shared reading, etc., which I am just not getting to at all.

After Meeting With My Group:

1. After meeting with my small group, the indicators of success I have identified for my routine data source are that my students need to consistently write post-its independently that show they are thinking deeply about their independent reading books and understanding something more than surface-level text about the content.

 2. My learning goal for my focal students is to know when to stop, think, and write about their independent reading, and to know how to think inferentially about their independent reading.

3. The next steps I am going to take are to teach my students how to “stop, think, and write” at appropriate places in their independent texts, and hold them more accountable for independent reading and thinking by collecting their independent reading post-its at the end of each Reading Workshop session so that I can make sure they were on task and completing the work as directed.

Recent Reflection

I started small reading groups two weeks ago in my classroom. I differentiated the groups by reading level, taking into account each student's ELD level as well. I want to make sure my students are really understanding what they're reading, have an understanding of the content and context, as well as basic language understanding of what they are reading. My plan so far has been to meet with each group just once a week and read part of a book with them at their level. I have started each meeting by listening to them read individually and give them phonics/decoding/fluency/etc. feedback and then attempt a structured group book talk about the section of the book that they just read. This has been going well so far. I have a few notes from each group's meetings, mostly about the specific feedback and related progress I give to each student. I don't think this is informing my study about post-it writing, but it could if I give them reading assignments where they need to return with post-its that will then guide the book talks. Maybe I can set this up after we've established the reading group norms a little better?

In terms of post-it collecting, I've continued to give students sentence frames and post-it assignments after mini-lessons, and expected them to write related post-its during their independent reading. Most of my students are able to write an informative and thoughtful post-it showing evidence during the mini-lesson check for understanding. All four of my focal students are able to complete this task successfully. My students are having more trouble with writing the independent post-its, even though they are supposed to be using the same sentence frame. Two of my four focal students were able to complete this task, but one wrote on-theme but not about the same standard I had taught during that lesson. Again, it makes me think that they need more specific stopping-points, or need more instruction about how to find a good stopping-and-jotting point in their own books. I think I can teach this through the small reading groups, but I'm not totally sure how.