Thursday, May 14, 2009

ATTENDED BY: Ms. Russell, Ms. Norwood (Literacy Coach)

RE: Instruction

We looked at the students who had difficulty writing the narrative. We found that part of the problem was that those students were not always keeping up with the daily writing assignments and another reason was that the focus this year was mainly on writing a five paragraph essay rather than a narrative. We felt that there may not have been enough practice within the genre.

Next steps:

• During the Jacqueline Woodson author study, infuse more writing of short fiction.
• Revise units of study next year to include more narrative writing
• Rather than use a teacher pre-written story to model the mystery story, model using a "class" group model to showcase the writing process

Thursday, May 7, 2009

ATTENDED BY:
Ms. Russell, Ms. Norwood, Ms. Swensson, Dr. Gamboa, Mr. Chesler, Ms. Pinero

RE: Student Progress

We continued to examine collected student work from September thru April in all subject areas. When noticed the following:

• Students with fluctuating grades tended either not to have writing frames attached to their work, understand the genre (writing narratives), or not keeping up during the writing process (according to writing tracking sheets/teacher observations).
• Overall, student writing did improve from the first writing sample in September to their first formal writing assignment in October/November using the writing frame.

Next steps:

• Continue stressing the use of the writing frame
• Continue examining student work

Friday, May 1, 2009

ATTENDED BY: Ms. Russell, Ms. Pinero, Mr. Chesler, Ms. Swensson, Ms. Norwood, Ms. Ingolia

After compiling several samples of student work for each student in the study across the content areas, we began to use a checklist to see if the students were making the four learning targets.

We examined the work of "Student D". We looked at an ELA essay from November 2008, a Math essay from December 2008, and a narrative from ELA from March 27, 2009. We observed that "Student D" initially had difficulty with organization, sentence, and paragraph structure. Although there has been some improvement in structure and organization, the student's progress isn't consistent across all content areas. We made the following recommendations for "Student D":

• All teachers need to insist on his use of a writing frame and/or graphic organizer whenever "Student D" writes an essay.
• "Student D" needs to kept on task throughout the writing process.
• More revision/editing of his drafts are necessary.
• Teachers should have the student read his draft aloud so he can hear errors in structure.
• Conferencing can be used for the student to articulate his thoughts before using a graphic organizer/writing frame or help throughout the drafting process.

NEXT STEPS: Continue looking at a few more students using the checklist.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

ATTENDED BY: Ms. Pinero, Ms. Russell, Ms. Ingolia, Ms. Swensson, Mr. Chesler

• Reflections on the meeting with Faye yesterday
• Revised the "Inquiry Team Checklist" to be used to examine the progression of student work

NEXT STEPS: Review the checklist and beginning looking at student progress.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

ATTENDED BY: ELA & MATH Inquiry Team, Mr. Nikc, Ms. Titus, Ms. Sajek (Math coach), Faye (ICI)

Both Inquiry Teams came together to look at each team's progress and to discuss the usage of student data.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

ATTENDED BY: Ms. Russell and Ms. Swensson

• Ms. Russell will be providing Ms. Swensson with a list of students from the 2007 - 2008 Inquiry Team study so she can track their progress.
• Ms. Russell and Ms. Swennson were discussing the creation of graphs and charts to show the progression of the study for the schoolwide presentation on Brooklyn Queens Day to the entire school.

Thursday, April 9 & 16, 2009

No Meeting - Happy Passover & Happy Easter