Using the Early Literacy Grant

by Amy Gurney Notes from the Classroom Oakland Writing Project

interventions-that-work Quickly introduced to the intricacies of my new job, I was handed a well-developed grant plan to execute. The grant is known as the Early Literacy Grant and the funds must be used to enhance K-2 literacy instruction. From county-level conversations, I know that districts are using these funds in many ways, such as summer-school programs, purchasing formative assessment modules, and extended-school-day stipends. The plan in my district, written by my predecessors, has two components for 1st grade students and teachers:

Targeted intervention groups
Enhanced professional learning for teachers

This blog is about our journey so far.

Targeted Intervention Groups

The targeted intervention groups include children with the lowest achievement on the Observation Survey, a series of six literacy observations including letter identification, word tests, concepts about print, writing vocabulary, hearing and recording sounds, and running records on leveled text. An Observation Survey of Early Literacy, by Marie Clay, is also one of the approved measures of achievement for the 3rd Grade Reading Law.

Most of the grant money is being used to pay substitute teachers to enhance this targeted intervention. With the assistance of a 1st grade assigned substitute, each 1st grade teacher has 45 minutes daily to run interventions with this group of children, for 90 days. The intervention typically runs for 20-30 minutes with the additional time used by teachers for formative assessments (progress monitoring) to set goals and next steps for the individual students.

Using consistent data sets, like running records and checklists from Interventions That Work, by Dorn and Soffos, the teachers know if a student is progressing toward grade-level independence–or possibly if they have reached independence with the intervention. In this way, the groups are malleable. Students may remain in the group or move out to the general classroom groups.

In December reflections, following 18-32 days of intervention (dependent on substitute start date), teachers observed that students were growing in their literacy skills, based on common assessments. Many teachers reflected on the wish for this opportunity with children whom they had last year. I always assure them that we can only be our best that day and we can always hope to grow, which most would say that we’ve done with this program.

Enhanced Teacher Professional Learning

Other important uses of this grant money are days of professional learning, because the best way to enhance achievement in a district is to increase the professional capacity of the teachers. We conducted three days of learning for each teacher throughout September and October, so that teachers could start this practice in a common way. Teachers have remarked that the learning days were valuable and something that they look forward to. One teacher notes, “Leaving kids at the beginning of the year was hard, but the rewards are there; learning new practice and implementing the learning has had the biggest impact. I am happy to have been trained and been able to use that to impact students.”

Additionally, in conversations across buildings on our learning days, teachers see the value in common practice and the common language of practice while having professional dialogue, and they hope to increase that capacity among their kindergarten and 2nd grade colleagues in the coming years. The topics that we have covered so far include observation surveys, progress monitoring, and specific training on Assisted Writing and Guided Reading Plus intervention groups from the Comprehensive Intervention Model portfolio (Center for Literacy UALR). As we continue with the year, I will continue to reflect with teachers, and we will have additional learning days. I’ll let you know how the story turns out, but so far the journey is powerful.

Amy Gurney (@agurney_amy) is an ELA and Social Studies Curriculum Coordinator for Walled Lake Schools. She has a Master’s degree from Michigan State University in Educational Administration and is currently pursuing an Education Specialist in Educational Leadership at Oakland University. She is a current Galileo Leader. She worked on the MAISA units of study and has studied reading and writing workshop practice and conducted action research.

#YOY2016: My Year of Yes

by Rick Kreinbring Notes from the Classroom Oakland Writing Project

Last January I watched a TED Talk given by Shonda Rhimes, writer, producer–you name it, she’s doing it–about her year of saying “yes” to everything that scared her. Ms. Rhimes says that saying “yes” to things that scared her, transformed both them and her.

It’s a powerful idea, and I decided that for 2016 I would be like Shonda and say “yes.” I didn’t make a big announcement but I did tell a few colleagues, and I made it clear to my children and students that my Year of Yes was mostly about professional requests. Sorry boys, no new dog named Jurgen.

Because of this commitment, I said “yes” to a few things that I might have passed on, not because they scared me, but because they sounded like more work than I really wanted, or they didn’t interest me, or it was a busy time of year (when isn’t it?). Things did get hectic, and I remember a colleague asking me if I’d gone a week without a professional development appointment. But I wasn’t as busy as many of the people I was saying “yes” to, and their examples pushed me when I was tempted to give it up.

Getting off the Back Burner

My first test came when the Oakland Writing Project chapter of the National Writing Project offered the opportunity to participate in a book study of Geneva Gay’s book Culturally Responsive Teaching, led by Richard Koch. It involved reading the book again as well as doing some reflection, and meeting with the group both in person and online.

Professional reading, a book study–I never find time for these. Like most teachers, I habitually skim and read professional material on teaching, education, writing, reading and so on. My desk has a pile devoted to “interesting stuff” I’m going to really dig into when I get a minute . . . this summer . . . someday. Gay’s book was buried in that pile, bookmarked, highlighted, forgotten.

Year of Yes, or YOY, made me dig it out and reread passages that I thought were worth thinking more about. I’d also committed to meeting with smart people and talking about Gay’s ideas, which meant I had to be prepared.

I’ve written before about Gay’s book and how it’s impacted me. But I’ll say again that the conversations around it have driven more of my decisions this year than anything else I’ve read.

These conversations weren’t pleasant. I’ve been confronting aspects of my practice that I’m not proud of. But I think that the conversations are making me a better teacher, and I wonder if perhaps the book was lingering on that pile because I didn’t want to think about the hard conversations I needed to have. Shonda, and the YOY, provided the push.

Saying Yes to a Big Project

Last April I was leading a small group of colleagues through a short workshop, which introduced the principles of Design Thinking. It went well, and one or two people suggested that we put together another one, this time for students. Good idea, but what’s that look like?

In a matter of a 30 minutes this energetic group decided that we should try an all-day deep dive into the Design Thinking experience for 70 staff and students off site–so a field trip–and that we do this in a month, before school let out and we lost our momentum.

I’d done some work coaching Design Thinking workshops in the summer, but I’d never planned one, and never been the lead presenter. And we had a really tight time frame.

But YOY meant I had to do it. We pitched the idea and got approval–was everyone else also in their YOY?–and through tremendous group effort we pulled it off. Seventy students and staff learned about Design Thinking and then, using what they learned, went into the community and redesigned the lunch experience for patrons of downtown Auburn Hills. Since then we’ve had two more workshops, and I turned over the lead presenter role to a member of that initial group. The conversations we’re having now are about how to grow this and sustain it.

I’m not sure I’d have done it if not for Shonda and our YOY.

So 2016, my Year of Yes, is over now. I’m not going to extend it and those are just two of the best takeaways. But I learned that when I took “no” off the menu, I tried more. And while I didn’t like all of it, I’m building from the new ingredients.

Rick Kreinbring (@kreinbring_rick) teaches English at Avondale High School in Auburn Hills, Michigan. His current assignments include teaching AP Language and Composition and AP Literature and Composition. He is a member of a statewide research project through the Michigan Teachers as Researchers Collaborative partnered with the MSU Writing in Digital Environments Program, which concentrates on improving student writing and peer feedback. Rick has presented at the National Advanced Placement Convention and the National Council of Teachers of English Conference. He is in his twenty-third year of teaching and makes his home in Huntington Woods.

“Hacking” School Culture

by Rick Kreinbring Notes from the Classroom Oakland Writing Project Professional Learning

imgres Like most teachers in Michigan, last week I spent two days proctoring the state’s SAT and ACT Work Keys tests. I collected the box of tests, read from the script, made sure there were no errant marks, and was generally absolutely bored.

The students, on the other hand, were completely stressed out by the experience, and walked away from the testing center looking like Walking Dead extras.

After spending this first day in SAT-land, I attended a workshop hosted by School Retool. School Retool is a professional development fellowship the helps school leaders redesign their school culture, using what they call “hacks.”

A colleague and I drove to the Wayne State University campus to meet a group of educators from across the state—there were two teachers from Grand Rapids—who had fled the confines of standardized testing to talk about how to change school culture.

The folks at School Retool say it’s about “hacks.” Hacks, according to them, are “small scrappy experiments” that help redesign school culture. Instead of being intimidated by the “big picture” and the things beyond my power, like standardized testing, hacking asks me to look at the levers I have in front of me, the small, scrappy changes I can make.

Don’t like the culture of my classroom? Then do something, a small thing. Pull a lever!

Changing Culture with Small Steps

Like most of the teachers at the workshop, I’ve been hacking in my classroom for some time, but I didn’t have a name for it.

shutterstock_320401619 My earliest “hacks” came when I moved the focus away from the teacher, me, as the primary audience for students’ writing, and went looking for an authentic audience. I ditched the five-paragraph essay. I replaced tests with Harkness-style discussions, and let students read whatever they wanted. I’ve tinkered with curriculum and “required reading,” while looking for more effective ways to help my students become better writers.

These are all small experiments, scrappy ones to be sure. But they’ve changed and continue to change the culture of my classroom and my department.

My takeaway from the event was a challenge I’ve been wrestling with for awhile now. What levers do I have that I can push to affect my school’s culture?

I walked into the workshop feeling, as I usually do during Test Week, exhausted and small. But listening to what other teachers were doing, or thinking about doing, started to work its magic on me. I felt my own culture and attitude changing.

Isn’t this what professional development is supposed to feel like? What am I going to hack next? What are we all?

Rick Kreinbring teaches English at Avondale High School in Auburn Hills, Michigan. His current assignments include teaching AP Language and Composition and AP Literature and Composition. He is a member of a statewide research project through the Michigan Teachers as Researchers Collaborative partnered with the MSU Writing in Digital Environments Program, which concentrates on improving student writing and peer feedback. Rick has presented at the National Advanced Placement Convention and the National Council of Teachers of English Conference. He is in his twenty-third year of teaching and makes his home in Huntington Woods.

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