Reflecting on Tests of Change

Please work with your school team to create a slide that represents one NSI test of change that your school has completed. Your slide should explain:

1. What was the test of change?

2. How did it go?

3. What did you learn from studying student work?

4. What did you decide to adapt, adopt or abandon?

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You might consider linking to any relevant documents (such as task sheets) or including images to help illustrate your test of change.

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Please add your work to the slide with your school’s name. If (for some reason) your school is not there, please create a new slide. Your slide can look however you’d like.

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Adamson

We have been working on moving from comprehension to interpretation to analysis and finally to essay. With the insane testing schedule, the path to the essay was crowded, but we got there and will peer review essays next week. It has been a process, but our first run through has been a success, I think. Not all of our teachers share the same planning time and we have encountered some logistical issues because of that, but we hope to find ways to communicate and share ideas with our next go at this progression.

I think we all agree that the students got better at this as we went along. From their first QW to the second, we saw improvement in apparent comprehension of the text. We created interpretation questions (really complex comprehension questions) that were challenging for the kids. (They were challenging to write as well) We created STAAR - like analysis questions and used those to help us prep for 3,6,9 weeks tests. I’d say that was an adopt. We tailored the questions to reflect the SE’s for upcoming tests, hoping that the familiarity will help them understand a bit more about test taking strategies and understanding what the questions are asking them to do or to think about.

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Atwell - Reflection on Test of Change

1. SAR Task Sheet/Activities

2. Students did well and enjoyed being able to provide feedback on other student’s work.

3. We used the RACE strategy to answer SAR regarding text. Students are not quite getting the “E” step of the RACE strategy. Will reteach this step.

4. Adapt--Race strategy. Include for students to intentionally make an inference. Adopt--Assessing in DAN. Abandon-assessing on paper.

Atwell Middle School - SAR Task Sheet (Example)

Purpose

To ensure students are able to adequately utilize the RACE strategy to respond to Quick writes/Short Answer Response questions (SAR).

Task

Read the Slide Task (see slide 3) and choose 1 of the 4 questions to answer using the RACE strategy.

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Step 1: Read the following text,, “Why is it fun to be frightened?” and annotate utilizing the 2DUB annotation strategy.

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Step 2: I (Teacher) will model how the RACE strategy should be used (see slide 4)

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Step 3: You will then choose one question to answer, individually, using the RACE strategy.

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Step 4: Then you will utilize Trio Sharing of your writing to see which writing sample you want to use and display on the chart paper.

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Step 5: Students will now chart the chosen response on the chart paper (see slide 5).

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Step 6: After writing responses, student groups will rotate and evaluate the writing (in a Gallaery Walk - see slide 6) to see if all 4 components of the RACE strategy have been utilized and give feedback to those group members.

Step 7: After you have finished the Gallery Walk, we will reconvene together as a class for Whole Group Discussion to talk about your findings.

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Atwell Students Preparing SAR Writing Sample (Charting)

Atwell - Gallery Walk and Discussion

Carter

• Our test of change was utilizing task sheets to help students better understand the main idea of My Ceremony for Taking and UnderStory.
• Students were able to close the gaps between their prior knowledge and inferencing.
• Students worked well when they were allowed to take charge of their learning. Students also worked well with their peers when the task was split, so they were not overwhelmed.
• Something we adopted was collaborative groups.

More Student Work

Carter

Student Work

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Carter- More Student Work

Dade

Garcia

1. What was the test of change?- Deadmen Talking.

2. How did it go? It went well!

3. What did you learn from studying student work? Student show their best work with differentiated, scaffolded, engaging texts.

4. What did you decide to adapt, adopt or abandon? Adapt: Text to fit diverse learning styles. Adopt: differentiated lessons, Videos for engagement, vocab practice, staar question stems, collaboration. Abandon:Unengaging text

Kennedy-Curry

Kimball

• What was the test of change: Our test of change was adapting a premade comprehensive task sheet to fit our needs. (for “My Ceremony For Taking”)
• How did it go: It went well! Students were engaged and seemed to grasp the literal and figurative meanings within the poem. They were able to take time for independent thought and peer learning.
• What did you learn from student learning: Students are capable of rigorous thought when they have clear instructions and time to build on their thought processes.
• What did you adapt, adopt, and/or abandon: We adapted the task sheets that were premade for our campus. The Task sheets reflected the use of Onenote and Padlet. We asked our kids to annotate on paper to make the interaction more tangible.

Lincoln

Test of Change: Comprehensive and analysis task sheets

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Marsh

1. What was the test of change?

Incorporating Task Sheets into our daily lessons.

2. How did it go?

Extremely well! Students enjoyed the student centered activities and it encouraged more engagement and participation. In addition, it created a communal learning environment and got students comfortable sharing and discussing their work with others. It was also a great way to develop students writing and responses.

3. What did you learn from studying student work?

Students benefit most from viewing other students work and enjoy collaborative group work.

4. What did you decide to adapt, adopt or abandon?

The task sheet was adapted from worksheet to a google slides version. We also decided to be more intentional of the activities we included, meaning we decided not to include the exact same activities for each task sheet, as we originally did.

Marsh

Marsh

North Dallas High School

Quickwrite Essay

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• Quickwrite was a great way to get them thinking and started writing!
• Kids need more practice writing and practicing the structure.
• We plan on showing them more examples of expository writing o help them with their own

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Alex W. Spence Middle School & TAG Academy

Each grade had a different text to complete their comprehension test of change:

• 6th grade did “The Landlady”. First we read and annotated it, then we wrote a summary of the story to check for understanding of the plot elements.
• 7th grade did “The Tell Tale Heart” Students engaged in reading and annotation of text for comprehension level questions. Then student used the text evidence and answers from the comprehension questions to provide evidence for interpretive and analysis level questions.
• 8th grade did “The Raven”, “The Tell Tale Heart” and “Dia de Los Muertos”.
• English I did “In Praise of Dreams” and the “Monkey’s Paw”

Spence IFL Evidence

• Adopt: adding MC STAAR aligned questions to task sheet
• Adapt: Extending task sheets past one day lesson
• Abandon: the need to get a test of change completed in one class day

Alex W. Spence Middle School & TAG Academy

Spence IFL Evidence

Each grade had a different text to complete their comprehension test of change:

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• 7th grade did “The Tell Tale Heart” Students engaged in reading and annotation of text for comprehension level questions. Then students used the text evidence and answers from the comprehension questions to provide evidence for interpretive and analysis level questions which required them to extend their understanding to the author’s purpose, and their own connections to the text.https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1pch94XZlXgeB4e5sEqNxrKrFiSq3Uzk66bD2vtmyx9A/edit?usp=sharing

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Wilmer-Hutchins

W. T. White

• Test of Change: Implementing student-centered routines �
• How did it go: It was tedious at first- students were struggling to discuss with one another (even with stems) and to see how one step connects to the next. Students approached these routines as steps to accomplish instead of digging into them as pieces that led to further developing bigger ideas.
• Student Work: Students struggled with arriving at “big ideas”. Asking them to note significant/important moments in the text and then to chart the big ideas ended up with more summary moments. We realized we need to connect those moments to the big idea to help them arrive at the big ideas.
• Adapt, Adopt, Abandon:
• Adapt: Charting in multiple formats so keep the routine without becoming repetitive. Clearer messaging around “big ideas”
• Adopt: We’re keeping the routines. :)
• Abandon:

• Digital Charting w/feedback

Student Work Samples

• Collaborating on charts (20 seconds)

• Sample pair/trio created charts analyzing a character

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The “Legendary” Zan Wesley Holmes, Jr. M.S.

What: We used BLOOD, a short story by: Zdravka Evtimova to engage in a comprehension and analysis task sheets.

How’d it go?: This was our second time using task sheet, but our first time doing a fiction story. Student were able to identify the elements of a fiction story fairly easy. We used the audio to help our exceptional students access the text. Students were given guided questions to help with annotations as they read the story.

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Student work: Instead our answering the quick write questions, students immediately went to writing a summary. We ended up adding an additional 2-3 mins for students to answer the question.

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Adapt | Adopt | Abandon: We are going to adopt using guiding questions for annotations.

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BLOOD | Comprehension Work Sample BLOOD | Analysis Work Sample