The team complete pre-reading of Chapter One

The team was asked to complete Chapter One of 'Clarity' by Lyn Sharratt before attending the Professional Development session. The team would later on ask staff to also engage in this pre-reading. Notes from Chapter One are shared below.

Introduction key points

Clarity = being coherent and intelligible
Collaborative professionalism in pursuit of school and system improvement:

Professional (norms of engagement, trust & interdependency)
Collaborative (nature, form, intentions in generating shared professional practice or professional capital)

Collaborative culture of learning (environment) - 3rd teacher (net result of the care, attention and purposeful scaffolding of the teacher)
Building the capacity for professional learning and system learning = 14 parameters
Deep conviction that all children can learn - authentic moral stance founded on principles of equity and equality.
Principal - instructional leaders - to work alongside teachers at professional learning sessions, modeling and monitoring effective and expected practices as learning leaders, always looking to find evidence of those practices that most benefit student learning. Principals use data, collaboratively with all staff, to inform school planning, to select resources, and to co-lead assessment practices that inform instruction for all students in their care.
Accept responsibility for results!
Improved learning and teaching through distributive leadership.
Importance of learning, teaching and leading with persistence, insistence, and consistency that results in clarity of purpose and practice. Improvement is a shared responsibility and that collective sustained professional effort is much more likely to bring successful improvement than individual and isolated endeavor.

Chapter 1

3rd teacher - should be co-constructed with students
Walking the walls - looking for evidence of students’ thinking - agreeing on visual staples to track learning - quickly referenced as a targeted, focused response to student’s needs at ‘just the right time.’
USEFUL:

Co-created anchor charts
De-constructed learning intentions
Co-constructed success criteria
Big idea thinking signposts
Bump it up walls
Collaboratively annotated student work (including weak examples!)
Co-defined acceptable behaviours/collective learner community responsibilities

If not used in 2 weeks take them down!
To bring about change - knowledge-ability, mobilize-ability, sustainability
Results-oriented team are focused on:

Research informed practice
Scrutinizing data - precise action
Precise performance targets
Differentiated support for teachers, leaders and students
Empowering at every level
Clear governance structures - transparent decision making processes

Lyn discusses 'parameters' that act as a framework for school improvement and success.

Parameter 1 - shared beliefs and understanding

All students can achieve high standards given the right time and support
All teachers can teach to high standards given time and the right assistance
High expectations and early and ongoing intervention are essential
All - can articulate what they do and why'

Parameter 2 - Knowledgeable other

Co-teach/co-labor - purposely scheduled
Coherence in improvement messages across the school.

Parameter 3 - Quality assessment informs instruction

Embed assessment for and as learning practices to inform their next steps of instruction
Data today is instruction tomorrow.
Gradual release and acceptance of responsibility model to ensure precision in practice.

Parameter 4 - Principal as Lead Learner

Always looking to find evidence of those practices that most benefit student learning
Put faces on the data and take action to make a difference
Participate in ongoing professional learning community work focused on data and driven by professional collaborative inquiry about high impact practices
Take part in system learning - plan how the learning will be replicated back at school
Learning walks and talks DAILY - learning happens in the classroom not their office

Parameter 5 - Early and Ongoing Intervention

Ongoing throughout the grade levels
Determined by ongoing scrutiny of data
Sharply focused
Collaboratively planned approach - design/deliver units with an integrated co-teaching approach to supporting all students. All teachers must strive to become intervention teachers capable of teaching all students.

Parameter 6 - Case Management Approach

2 process - 1. Prevention: the co-construction of data walls allows staff members to stand back and discuss students’ areas of need, to set targets, and to decide what is possible for each face
2. Intervention: case management in which a teacher presents one student at a time, through a work sample, to a problem solving forum focused on supporting the classroom teacher with a recommended instructional strategy to try.
System level - data walls and CMMs mirror those of school - differentiated resourcing and professional learning in each school across a system

Parameter 7 - Focused Professional Learning at Staff and Professional Learning Community meetings

Using meeting times for professional learning builds teacher and leader collective capacity and develops a common language across all learning areas.
Learning - the focus of all meetings
The capacity of the group is therefore built
Collective understanding of the vision for the improvement work.
Meeting times = sharing impactful teaching practice
It is key that classroom teachers share leadership in planning and designing their professional learning, to ensure they are learning what they think they need to learn and to create commitment to and ownership of their learning
PL - relevant and practical to their work!

Parameter 8 - In School Meetings - Collaborative Assessment of Student Work

Greatest variation in teaching in a system is not between schools; it is between classrooms in the same school.
To reduce that variation., evidence of student learning through student work samples is used in regular, ongoing co-teaching conversations in which teachers collaboratively determine to:

Sharpen the use of assessment data
Broaden their individual and collective instructional repertoire
Challenge assumptions in a respectful way
Improve immediate descriptive feedback strategies
Move students from one level of work to the next and beyond expectations

Begin with ‘wonder why’ - worrying trend, spike or individual student with an issue
Co-develop common assessment tools
Collaboratively assess student work
Give one another evidence-based feedback
Co-create curriculum based exemplars in order to reduce variation in practice among classrooms

Parameter 9 - Book rooms of leveled books and multi modal resources

Access to ‘just right’ & ‘just in time’ resources
Reflect diversity
Meet a range of abilities and needs
Address a range of student interests
Easily accessible
Support teachers’ implementation of the curriculum at students’ point of need
Processes are established for regular auditing of system and school resources - sustain quality assurance/refresh understanding of what is available to them

Parameter 10 - Allocation of system and school budgets for learning

Equity of outcomes for all learners is assured through budget resourcing (human and material) to support learning and learners.
Some centrally retained funds = for flexible and responsive resources to meet emerging needs
System needs = collaboratively triaged - support is allocated using data, not by applying resources equally.

Parameter 11 - Collaborative Inquiry - a whole system, school and classroom approach

Every meeting begins with a review of data, searching for the impact of actions on previously identified issues
Collaborative inquiry questions follow - to test pedagogical approaches they feel will enable instruction to elevate student achievement to meet their collective SMART goals
The system supports the work of school teams by providing funds and offering professional learning sessions focused on how time is spent on collaborating and on developing the necessary research skills to the CI work. At the end of the research cycle, inquiry teams make available reports documenting their learning journeys and findings. Systems find ways to celebrate the learning and mobilize the knowledge gained across schools.
Being involved and comfortable with professional inquiry leads teachers replicating that process for students in classrooms.
Engaging students in processes to uncover their wonderings and excite their inquisitiveness results in empowered student learning of the curriculum content.