Scanning Phase
As a staff that has recently engaged in the Spiral of Inquiry process for the first time, a large amount of time was spent in the scanning phase, asking the question, "What is going on for our learners?" In order to create as large a scan of the learning landscape as possible, staff, students, and parents were involved in the process at various points. For our first efforts, staff participated in the scanning phase during the fall of 2016 and were given time during multiple staff meetings, as well as Implementation Day, to discuss with colleagues what they were observing. We in fact began our journey of understanding what was going on for our learners by working collaboratively with AS Matheson, South East Kelowna Elementary and the Instructional Leadership Team (ILT). In order to address the question of "What is going on for our learners?" a number of different methods were also utilized. Identified below are some of the main ways in which the staff engaged in the scanning phase.
- School-wide and classroom observations
- One to one conversations with individual students - survey developed by the staff
- School-Wide Survey of our families
- Development and review of classroom profiles for every class
- School Based Team data
- Conversations with parents
- Review of feedback from school-wide data from staff
We then went deeper into understanding what the learning looked like from the student and parent perspectives. This process of examining what we believe is important allowed us to create student and parent surveys. These surveys were based on 5 essential questions from Linda Kaiser and Judy Halbert 's "Spirals of Inquiry". Our questions were developed by our Committee and then were tested on a pilot group of students. Following feedback and discussion we then improved the questions and brought these forward to our entire staff for discussion. The questions we decided on are the following:
1) Do you have adults who care about you? (What about at school? Who else?)
2) Think about the school year. What are you learning? Why is it important?
3) How is it going at school? Can you tell me more about this?
4) When you make a mistake/or a poor choice how do you feel and what do you do?
5) What could help you be more successful? Explain
We also went through a similar process in developing, piloting and asking parents for their feedback. The difference being all staff members interviewed students one-on-one whereas we surveyed parents on-line. We did receive a 25% parent participation rate which is considered high for an on-line school- wide survey. All staff members interviewed a minimum of 7 students with half from their classroom and half randomly selected from other grades. What was becoming noticeable during the scanning phase, and through many conversations about the scanning process is that several themes were becoming very evident. This brought us to the focusing phase.
Focusing Phase
What popped out at us during the scanning phase? What additional evidence do we need? How will we gather it? What are some strengths that your learners show in this area? How could we build on these strengths? What can we do more of more often? What is going to make the biggest difference for our learners? What can we most effectively tackle over the next few months?
As a result of an extensive scanning phase, and asking ourselves, "Where are we going to concentrate our energies so that we can enhance the experiences and success for our learners," we discussed the evidence we collected from students, parents and staff. We know that we have many strong programs and focus diligently on Social Emotional learning. This is an area we all agree we are strong in but need to continue to focus on building resiliency and empathy in students. Our scanning of information really brought forward our need to focus on several themes:
- Making students understand that mistakes are necessary and valuable. (Growth Mind Set)
- Honouring that many students are not understanding math and are seeking greater clarity, more meaningful and relevant work, and want help from others. (Making Learning Visible)
- Parents and teachers want student to be able to better communicate and demonstrate evidence of their growth, and articulate next steps needed for improvement. (Self-Assessment)
- The majority of students feel very strongly that there are at least two or more adults that believe they will be successful
This brought us to more discussion of what will bring us the biggest impact to change our practice and to improve student learning. We know we are doing well meeting students social/emotional needs, and maintaining a steady improvement of students meeting across curricular areas. The next area of reasoning was our ability to change mind-sets and make the learning more visible to students and parents.
Developing a Hunch
As a result of the Scanning and Focusing phases, as a staff we have been able to start asking ourselves the questions of "Why is this happening?" And, as importantly, "how, as professional educators are we contributing to it?" For instance, why can students explain what they are learning in great detail but often struggle with the more in-depth "Why are we learning these topics?" Also, we realized that mistakes are not always seen as necessary steps to learning and improving by our students. The question then becomes how do we make mistakes an accepted and meaningful part of every child's learning experience in the school setting and with life lessons. In analyzing our findings we have reflected on how we can help students become deeper thinkers and engage with school in very impactful and meaningful ways. If we make learning more explicit and visible can we build strategies to help students engage and take more ownership for their learning? By focusing on a Growth Mind-Set can we also help students embrace mistakes just like Thomas Edison: an important and necessary part of continual improvement.
This phase involved deep discussion with our Inquiry Committee as well as with our teaching staff. We had the opportunity to reflect on our beliefs and assumptions of student learning and discuss how we see our role contributing to positive change. We had very open and challenging conversations that made us really think how do we see children understanding their learning at different ages. Can Kindergarten students really understand what they need to improve? Do we all believe in Growth Mind-sets and can we change a Fixed Mind-Set to a growth with students?
Once we worked through our conversations and beliefs we came to an agreement that we can have a very positive change on students learning with a refreshed approach.
What was becoming noticeable during the scanning and focusing phases is that an overarching theme was becoming very evident. This theme we decided as a group was basically making all learning more visible to learners. Under this umbrella theme we also discovered that a continued focus on our student's social emotional needs was highly valued and strongly advocated by all. We believe we can best address our social emotional student needs through the lens of a Growth Mind-set. Secondly, in terms of academics what we also realized is that visible learning will also help us improve student learning. Specifically, we have groups of teachers dedicated to learning more about authentic reporting (i.e. Fresh Grade Portfolios) and making math more process based, hands-on and explicit.
Learning Phase
As we have only recently begun using the framework, a portion of our learning as a staff continues to be about the Spirals of Inquiry itself. To that end, we have allocated time monthly in our Inquiry Committee Meetings and staff meetings to furthering our education of Spirals as to what it is, what it is not, and how to effectively engage in the process as we become more familiar with it.
The feedback from the previous phases have allowed us to delve further into making learning visible. We have groups working very diligently on Fresh Grade, Google Read and Write and making math make better sense. Our math groups are inquiring about what they can be doing differently to enhance their practice to more effectively engage and support all students in their learning, particularly the reluctant learner. Our guiding process throughout part of the process is, " How and where can we learn more about what to do?" Our math groups in primary and intermediate are modeled after Catharine Fosnot's "Contexts for Learning." We will also begin to delve more into the work and philosophy of Jo Boaler to help us create a Mathematical Growth Mind-Set. We have started focusing more on the environment to begin with and making problems meaningful. The next steps for the math groups are to work towards mini-lessons (mental math and number talks, games and puzzles). We have most of our staff working on one or more of the above also with the collaborative help of our district's ILT (Instructional Leadership Team).
In regards to the social-emotional aspect we will be enhance our existing programs with something new. We will spend more time in staff meetings and with our school team bringing back more Growth Mind-Set strategies and approaches into the school-wide and classroom settings.
Taking Action
- Hosted a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) night for Bankhead Families in February 2016. It was well attended by over 200 people from the Bankhead community.
- Shared Growth Mind Set Strategies at staff meetings throughout the school year and with parents at a PAC meeting.
- In September, The district technology team did an in-service to further develop knowledge using Fresh Grade. Teachers worked collaboratively throughout the year to further develop their skill sets in this area.
- Attending the workshop at HRES with the District team from Surrey who shared their learning journey with Fresh Grade-electronic portfolios
- Continuing our understanding of the Spirals of Inquiry by Judy Halbert and Linda Kaiser
- Sharing Learning Visible Lessons/Strategies forward in staff meetings from our Spirals Committee
- Sharing more Growth Mind-Set ideas with students (especially in math)
- Staff are invited to attend a weekly webcast by Jo Boaler
- Continuing our work in math by explicitly working to blend the core academic areas and competencies in their classrooms to make numeracy less abstract and make as many connections to the real world as possible classes in support of addressing the questions students have posed to themselves, and are seeking the answer to.
Further, to make math more interactive, math teachers are reinvigorating their learning of Kagan structures and implementing them more frequently in class. As well, a focus of math teachers.
Checking Phase
The lists below are ways that will help us monitor the success of the efforts put forth.
Social-Emotional
- One to one conversations with students
- Review results of Satisfaction survey
- Increase in academic achievement
Numeracy
- Overall increase in achievement rates in math
- Number of students indicating math as a favourite subject (survey)
- Number of students incorporating numeracy themes into their student-led conferences