Power Standards Protocol

"Without a definite process to prioritize standards, teachers will often "pick and choose" those standards to emphasize based on what they like to teach, what they have curriculum materials for, what they think students need to know and be able to do the following year, and/or those standards most likely to appear on the state test. But without using specific criteria for prioritization, everyone will most likely select different standards from their colleagues and then wonder why students come to them each year with such an inconsistent understanding of prior-grade standards."  -Larry Ainsworth, Ed Week Jan 2015

Last Friday the Literacy Coach meeting was expanded to include teachers from grades 2-12 to engage in a protocol around identifying ELA Power Standards in each of these grades.  To Ainsworth's point, since our adoption of the Common Core State Standards, we have never had the opportunity to work in vertical teams like this, discussing and selecting priority standards based on a shared set of criteria.  At the middle school level, I believe our extensive work in content PLGs and the collaboration among the coaches both here and in the 5DP have helped us think about the standards we prioritize, but that criteria on which to prioritize standards had been more implicit. Before jumping into the standards themselves, the protocol in which we engaged began with an explicit explanation of the criteria all grade-level teams would use to select power standards.

We discussed the standards using these four criteria:

• Endurance: extends beyond one year of learning. Applies to real-life concepts & skills students will need beyond your class/school 
• Leverage: Has application in contents disciplines other than yours 
Readiness for the next level of learning: contains the knowledge and skills students need in order to move onto the next level
• External Exams: will be assessed on standardized exams, i.e. Common Assessments, MCAS 2.0                                                (Criteria descriptions "Priority Standards: The Power of Focus" Ainsworth)

The Protocol 

With our shared understanding of the criteria by which we should be evaluating the standards, our director, Dr. Porter, charged us with the task of identifying just 10 priority standards for our grade level.  To organize this, she had placed chart paper around the room labeled with each of the 5 strands and how many standards we should prioritize per strand: Reading Literature(3-4), Reading Informational Text(3-4), Writing(3), Speaking & Listening(2), and Language (2).  

My grade-level team consisted of myself and Briana, a 6th grade ELA teacher at SBA. Each grade level team began by independently reading through all standards in the Reading Literature Strand and independently selecting 3-4 RL standards using the four criteria.  Once we had our agreed-upon standards we posted them on our grade level chart paper.  We then discussed our standards with the grade level team above and below us to see the connection or lack thereof in our standards selection.  There were certainly some differences, but often times when we looked at each particular grade's version of a standard, it helped us make sense of why they had been selected.  In a few cases, teams elected to remove or swap out a standard they had initially selected.

When Briana and I came together to discuss our selected standards we noticed a couple things. First, that we had each focused on many of the same standards and we only had to work to come to an agreement on the 4th of our 4 selected standards. Secondly, we had both used Endurance as our main lens for thinking about which standards to prioritize.  This big-picture thinking is essential, I think, but I also noticed as we moved through the strands and consulted with other grades that we had to adjust our standards at times when we incorporated more of the other criteria. Readiness, for example, was a criterion that we used more in our discussions with vertical teams about how the standards should build on each other.  

  

We repeated this same process of independent selection, grade-level team agreement, vertical team discussions for each of the remaining four strands.  The original parameters from Dr. Porter had given us the freedom to select up to 15 power standards over the strands, with the understanding that eventually we want to evaluate further to get our number as close to 10 as possible.  In our remaining time, we worked to see where we could make eliminations or consolidations in some cases.  Many grade level teams chose to view RL/RI standards 1 and/or 2 as the same general standard with different text-types.

Points to Consider

• These charts of selected standards are DRAFTS and remain open for revision and suggestions for other grade-level teachers who were not present during the protocol.  So please consider your grade level's draft and please feel free to send along feedback about the standards. 
• This does not change anything for the current school year. Once the Drafts are revised and finalized during Spring 2018. we will adopt the Power Standards beginning in the 2018-2019 school year.
• Selecting Power Standards does not mean all other standards are obsolete and can be ignored. The 10-ish standards that make it to the finalized Power Standards documents are the ones you will continue to teach and weave into your instruction on a year-long basis.  The remaining standards will be divided up into the Quarter Anchor Units based on where it makes sense to emphasize those particular standards.  This work begins October 27th.
• You'll notice Writing standards 1, 2, & 3 are absent from the posters. These writing standards are already emphasized in certain quarters of the year based on your anchor unit and the benchmark assessment.  Those writing standards remain where they are, emphasized in each particular quarter, but the Power Standards in the drafts reflect additional writing standards that meet the criteria for year-long priorities. 

Click Here to see a document I created to see the full chart pictured above.  I made a chart for grades 5-9 to give us a complete picture of where our students are coming from and where they are going.  I look forward to hearing your thoughts about this and to continue this work with anchor units.

Writing Center Observation

Last month I had the privilege to visit the Writing Center at Revere High School for the second time. During my first visit, I witnessed the tutors working with a History class full of students writing papers they had been assigned.  In that session I observed the Writing Tutors taking a variety of approaches.  A few tutors sat with groups of students with Chromebooks open, ready to provide feedback in real time, watch students' writing, processes, comment on students' feedback to each other, and also to ensure students understood the feedback given to them by peers. It was a student-driven, student-managed, highly productive environment. Watching the writing tutors in action sparked in me a desire to see the foundation of this work--to see the work they'd engaged in to become such effective tutors. So, over the summer I reached to the Writing Center Coordinator and she kindly invited me to visit the Center in September during her work with the tutors.

The group of six tutors, three male, three female, sat around a table joined by their teacher, Allison Casper, all holding copies of the same piece of narrative writing.  To practice this process of providing peers feedback on their writing, the tutors begin by offering their own writing to the group for analysis and feedback.  I joined the group as they were in the middle of sharing their feedback and questions about one of their fellow tutor's college essay.  They spoke about her piece with such respect as if they had read every line very carefully because, I sensed, they had.

"You have a lot of powerful phrases and words," one of her peers complimented.

Casper probed, "Can you give her an example?" Each of the tutors returned to the text and pulled out a few particularly powerful phrases to share with the writer.

The group talked about the different vignettes in her writing and a couple tutors shared how her piece reminded them of The House on Mango Street and wondered if she was in fact inspired by that text. As the tutors continued their discussion of the vignettes and ways to possibly reorder the stories for different effects, Ms. Casper jumped in to remind the writer about the importance of "following threads" that she has opened up for the reader.  The audience, the reader, was a constant part of the conversations as the tutors shared how certain aspects of the piece impacted them or drew them in.

When Casper moved the group to share what questions the piece raised for them, they asked, "What is the central theme?" "What were you trying to do in this paragraph?" This paragraph here, I wondered if you could elaborate on this type of  love?" "Which sickness do you think impacted you the most? Maybe you could write about that one?"   There was no expectation on the writer to have answers to these questions or even to share her thinking at the moment.  It was all very conversational as the group talked energetically about her writing and she absorbed their comments, sometimes jotting down notes in the margins of her copy of the piece.  To wrap up the feedback cycle, Ms. Casper reinforced for the writer just how much she had to think about as she moved into the revision stage of her writing.  On a practical note, she also reminded the writer to copy and paste into a new document before revising so she would never lose her original pieces.  Each of the tutors returned their copy of her writing back to her with all their notes for her to read later.

The group then moved onto another student whose narrative piece was also a college essay.  Casper began by asking the writer, "What were you trying to convey to the admissions board?" He responded easily, telling the group he was hoping to show that working during high school has made him a more patient person with better time management skills. Again, each member of the group had their own copy of the piece and followed along as the author read his piece aloud.  The group then engaged in a second, silent reading of the piece.

Ms. Casper moved the group from the individual reading into the feedback phase by, reminding them that they provide feedback in a particular order: "What works well in the piece? What questions do you have?"  The group praised his use of comedy and description of situations to which all shoppers could relate. He shared, somewhat nervously, that the chronology of his story probably wasn't accurate but that he had combined a bunch of memories.   One of his peers assured him, "I wouldn't worry about being totally truthful in your writing.  I had to fabricate a little because I couldn't remember all the details exactly."

Their exchange reminded me vividly of something Lucy Calkins had said when I heard her speak at the 2016 Don Graves Write Now! Conference. Calkins talked about the role of memory in narrative writing and she said just what this writing tutor said, you can't get stuck on being 100% truthful in narrative writing.  You may have a strong memory from childhood and you also remember outfits you wore as a child.  In narrative writing, you combine all the little details you remember with the larger memories that you can't forget.  It was beautiful to witness a writer who understood this about narrative assuage her peer's fear that his writing wasn't quite real simply because he'd played with a few details.

At some point, the conversation among the tutors and teacher began to sound a little like listening in on a book club.  They spoke about the details they appreciated and connected with as readers.  They wondered if the writer inserted a little more dialogue into a certain passage if it would help them understand another character more. They shared their confusion at certain parts and wondered at the writer's intentions.  Again, the writer remained fairly quiet during their conversation, soaking in their feedback and reflecting on the changes he will make when revising.

For homework, the students were assigned an article titled, "Minimalist Tutoring: Making Students Do All the Work" by Jeff Brooks. Intrigued by everything I had observed in their feedback session, I sought out and read the article myself. Brooks says, "We ought to encourage students to treat their own writings as texts that deserve the same kind of close attention we usually reserve for literary text." Brooks has many more concrete strategies and specifics on how to be a minimalist tutor, but this one quote sums up for me what I saw in the Writing Center.  There was such respect for each writer and their piece.  Everyone in the circle was giving equal attention, reverence, and reflective consideration to their own and each other's writing.  Again, their discussions brought me back to something Calkins said about the discussion around writing or finding a topic.  When a writer shares their ideas for a piece of writing with you, it is the listener's job to ask questions that increase the writer's energy to talk about and eventually write about their topic.

At the end of the session, Ms. Casper asked for my thoughts and energy was the only word I could think of to appropriately describe my experience there.  It was so clear to me that the constructive feedback and discussions around their pieces left each writer buzzing with energy to revisit their pieces and revise with a purpose. Just as the ideas for writing center has trickled down from college writing centers, I continue to think about what we can do for middle school students to recreate these thoughtful and powerful discussions about writing amongst peers.