The Nucleus of our School

Picture it: Our School is a Living Breathing Cell

To help this metaphor along I am lucky because Westlawn is actually shaped a little like a cell

Can you label this cell?

I want to ask you what the Nucleus of our school is?

Most would be tempted to say the office, and from a staff point of view, they would probably be correct. The office directs activity of the rest of the school and is responsible for making important decisions for the cell.

From the point of view of the individual classroom, and of most of the students, the nucleus would probably be the teacher in the classroom.

What I would like to propose, and this gets to the point of this blog post, is that the nucleus of the school should be that octagon shape near the northern third of the map shot. That little octagon in the roof is the top of our library.

A Library cannot be the nucleus of a school, but a literacy centre sure as heck can.

I know that there are budget restraints, but I wanted to paint my dream of what every modern school should have as a literacy centre, and I will use Westlawn's current library as the base model. This also gives me a chance to try out LucidChart in our google apps set of tools.

Westlawn's Current Library

Here you can see a few distinct rooms with some flowing work space and a nice area for group presentations. This is a great design for turn of the century and late 1990's learning with technology. There is computer lab, the netbooks are stored away for teacher use and students can use the library as they would any typical library. I say our current library is a fantastic use of space, but it is not the nucleus of our school.

So, here is what I propose, in a dream world and with a budget that would allow us to knock down a few walls.

Westlawn's Future Literacy Centre

Some of the text is hard to read, so I will take you on a quick tour starting at the north end. We still have our server room and a teacher's resources depository where the class sets on books will be stored, but just to the East of this is the student and teacher resources checkout terminal. From here teachers can borrow class sets of ipads and netbooks, and students can sign out individual ipads and netbooks. They also use this terminal to sign out books. Moving South East there is a POD of Desktop P.C.s where groups of 6 or 12 or 18 students can access the internet, create cloud based objects and do various types of student directed learning. In the middle of the room our books play a prominent role in creating an environment where reading and literacy are respected. Also in the middle of the room are our laptop PODS where students can read or work on their laptops.

The large group presentation Centre is supposed to have a screen there, but there must have been some problem with the dowload from lucidchart. We could still have groups of 60 - 120 students in this space for guest presentations. The smart board, on the far west end of the room, would be the centre of a small group presentation centre where a teacher could deliver instructions to an entire class.

All in all there are 6 PODS of Desktops, 4 PODS of Laptops and a storage space for our poratble ipad and netbook carts (easily and affordably upgrade-able to chromebooks).

If this vision were to come to life the library literacy centre, would become more than the geographic centre of the school, it would become the controlling idea of the school. It would be the nucleus of life at Westlawn, where learning (21st century learning) is what matters.

Whole School Assessment Data

So the whole school wrote a few exams that I helped manage and implement, and now I have some whole school data. Now what? What do I do with the data that I've got?

First of all I have to thank all of the teachers that did the hard work of administering the exam to their students, grading and recording the results and getting the info into me in a timely and well organized fashion. I know these tests eat into the quickly disappearing classroom instructional time, and I truly appreciate the effort you take in these whole school projects.

As I am reading through the body of numbers that I have carefully compiled and analyzed , the dominant thought that keeps coming up is this, "look at all those flaws."

To begin, rather than jump right in and use the data that I do have, I want to refine the data collection process, so that next year there will be far fewer flaws, and far more effective, usable information. This approach of focusing on the negative,  may in itself be flawed, but I will follow Stephen Covey's advice because, "the highest and best use of a person's time is that action that most effectively addresses the problems at hand and is most consistent with the individual's identified purpose in life."

My purpose: collect meaningful and useful data on the literacy and numeracy skill levels for the entire student population. This data must be openly shared with teachers so that they can have more information about their students and their instructional effectiveness. This knowledge can then be used to refine instructional practice.

I haven't read this book ;-)

Now that I know my purpose I need to understand the problems at hand, so here they are:

Problem 1: The information on the outliers is not accurate enough. From this recent battery of assessment information I calculated that in grade 9 alone there are 29 students reading at a University level of reading comprehension. At the same time I calculated another percentage of students reporting similairly flawed results, but at the low end of the g.l.e. spectrum. While it is certainly clear that there is a range of ability, I know these students personally, and I know that both results are inherently flawed. The problem with this is that if a report of 12.9 grade level equivalent and a report of 2.2 g.l.e.is flawed, then doesn't it stand to reason that a report of 7.8 g.l.e. or a report of 9.4 g.l.e. is flawed as well?

Problem 2: Exam implementation. While the exam administration and implementation this May was astoundingly better operated than the one in September there are still some big gaps in how this assessment is handled. Two points of conflict arise i) some classrooms allowed students to use calculators while some did not ii) one of my key math teachers tells me the estimation exam is much less valuable than the computation exam ie) I may have been using the wrong assessment.

Problem 3: There may be enough information in the one reading comprehension exam. Does it make sense to include reading comprehension part two? Vocabulary? Spelling? Language/Writing Conventions? If so, then how could I ensure a smooth administration of a much more complex and harder to organize, grade and analyze battery of assessment?

The ultimate goal is how to use the data effectively, but until the above problems are addressed, the next step should really not be taken.

Solution 1: The test sequence needs to be changed. Instead of starting a Fall Grade Seven Exam at level 16. We have to start the testing sequence at level 15. The future test sequence needs to be as follows:

• Fall 
• Grade 7 - Level 15
• Grade 8 - Level 16
• Grade 9 - Level 17
• Spring
• Grade 7 - Level 16
• Grade 8 - Level 17
• Grade 9 - Level 18

This eliminates the vastly flawed results from the grade nine level 19/20 exam. This will eliminate the top range outliers, but there is still a problem with our strategies and literacy students writing exams that yield the useless results of g.l.e 1 - 4. The solution that I propose for this problem will be to drop down one exam level for the strategies class and two exam levels for literacy classes. So when the regular grade eight class write a level 16 exam the strategies class will write a level 15, and when the regular grade 9 class writes a level 17 exam the literacy class will write a level 15. This should hopefully eliminate the inaccurate and useless low-level g.l.e. outliers.

Solution 2: Exam implementation and administration by classroom teachers. This problem can be solved in the same way as Solution 3 will be solved. I need to work with the teams on building next years battery of exams. I need to ask math which is the more beneficial exam (estimation, computation or both), and I need to work with the humanities team and find out which exams they would like me to run (r.c 1, r.c. 2, spelling, vocabulary, writing conventions or some combination of the 5 tests). Once this has been decided I can do the labour intensive first draft and keep a collection of originals for teachers to re-create. 

Solution 4: I need two instructions to come across more clearly when we do this in September i) when can a calculator be used b) teachers need to instruct students on how to fill in a scantron - ever single time. It is surprising how many grade nine students used pen or crossed out instead of erasing their answers when they changed their minds. 

The next step is the hard one. 

Now that the above problems have been addressed the real work will begin: How can we use the data effectively? 

This may seem like a one part endeavour, but it is slightly more complex. There are two separate issues. One issue can be addressed here, and with the help of my staff, and the other step needs to be considered a future date, after the conversations with the humanities and math teams have taken place. 

The step that we will not take today is how do we effectively use this data once it has been collected in September? Save that for a future date.

The step we are taking today is how do we use the data that we do have right now? I will start and I hope you can finish in the comment section below. We have whole school information about one standard reading comprehension exam and one numeracy exam. What do we do with this info?

1. Use it to help place students in their classes next year. As we move to ability grouping for our classes next year this data can be the hard fact that help justify some movements. Of course the knowledge of our students as individuals will trump this numerical report, but this information can help inform some of the more difficult decisions.
2. Look at our own personal effectiveness as a classroom teacher when compared to our peers. Is one class improving more? Why is that? Are there particular students in your class that experienced remarkable improvements? Can you think of anything in your instruction that would explain the phenomenon?
3. What else???? comment below or email me steven.greene@epsb.ca

One more big question

As I am writing the above numbered list about what to do with the data that we have there is one nagging question in the back of mind? Is this worth it? Will the data that is eventually arrived at really help our school reach their goal of better instruction and learning at higher levels? 

I think yes, but I would like to talk about it and know for sure. What do you think?

Watch this:

Thanks to George Couros (again) and his blog The Principal of Change for sharing this video. I am happy to share this video with the staff here at Westlawn, and anyone else that may be reading this blog (yeah right). There isn't a whole lot I can say about this video except that it will make you laugh and it will make you feel good about the work that you are doing. As everyone is working away in their teams building and refining their final exams it is nice to be reminded of the individual student and our special relationship with them.

Enjoy,



Have a great day Westlawn.

Idea du Jour

I have seen this video posted on a number of ed blogs, most notably by George Courous at his blog the Principal of Change. He is one blogger that I love reading because it really seems uncensored. Far too often we hesitate to click publish because we are scared of being misinterpreted or offending someone. The purpose, as I see it, of blogging is to explore ideas publicly. Part of this means possibly making mistakes and maybe even upsetting some people. As long as it is done with honesty and respect, I say click publish.

The idea that George and others are sharing is a video called ten expectations. This video is a commentary by the organization "leaving to learn.org." The main idea of this book/site is that student engagement and success can increase by allowing students to pursue "out-of-school" learning experiences.

The video challenges schools and classrooms to meet ten student expectations. Well, here you watch it:

One of the ideas that stands out in my mind, this speaks about the lens that I am viewing through in my position right now, is that it encourages schools and classrooms to be student-centered. We like to think that we are student centered, but how often are schoolwide or classroom decisions made based on larger organizational policies or budget restraints? I know that this is the reality that we have to work in, but can we really claim to be student-centered?

Some changes and policies are difficult to achieve, but if we put the individual student and their needs first, and then form our classrooms, schools and districts policies around that one student, only then can we say that we are in fact student centered.