60,056 reading minutes in Mo-vember

You can't tell too well from this angle, but my beard now has several designs in it, including a V for Viking and P for PRIDE. Mr. LaTour's beard consists of two brown antlers and a bright red nose, designed by Mrs. Roberts and Mrs. Munson's classes, respectively. Roberts' class read 5277 after-school minutes in November and Munson's read 5021 minutes. All together, we had 22 of 42 classes participate in this event, reporting a total of 60,056 minutes read. If you were to figure out how many words this is, assuming that the kinder parents did most of the reading at this point in the year, these classes read over 5,000,000 words in Mo-vember. We'll be sporting these beards all day, even when I head to the district office this afternoon for my meeting with our Superintendent and Assnt. Sup.

Why put so much emphasis on reading? According to Hattie (2009)* exposing kids to reading has an overall effect of .63 on oral language and .41 on reading. Parent-preschooler joint book reading has a .67 effect on language growth, .58 effect on emergent literacy, and .55 effect on reading achievement. THIS WAS CONSISTENT ACROSS ALL SOCIOECONOMIC GROUPS. (sorry for yelling, it's just really important!) Reading with your kiddos trumps so many other environmental issues that hinder learning. 

Once we get students to read, and maybe even like reading, we can instruct them. Visual perception programs (the process of organizing and interpreting letters on a page) = .55. Vocabulary programs = .67. Phonics instruction = .60 with an overall effect size on phonological outcomes of .86, reading outcomes of .53 and spelling of .59. Repeated reading, re-reading a short and meaningful passage until reading a satisfactory fluency level = .67.

Do I need to continue? Do you see the importance? Do you see why we are willing to look so silly in the name of reading?

*Reminder: Hattie's research identified a .40 effect size as being equal to an average year's growth for a student. Anything greater than .40 is more than a year's academic growth. 

What is my biggest concern as a principal?

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My biggest concern as a school principal is that I have a large discrepancy in effectiveness among my teachers. By discrepancy I mean a difference in how much of an academic impact one teacher can have on his/her students compared to other teachers in the same grade.

We often hear that people wish they had a choice in schools their children can attend because School A has a better reputation or is known as being a better school. But the research shows that there is only a 30% difference in academic effectiveness, nationwide, among schools. (click here for some research. I'll update it once I hear back from a few people who presented to us last week.)

But there is as high as a 70% difference among teachers in the same building (Dr. Ray Smith, 2015). This means that in some schools, it is an educational lottery. If you are lucky to be with a teacher who is highly effective, your students will show amazing growth. But if you have an unlucky draw, your students might actually leave the school year further behind. That is what keeps me awake at night.

How do we remedy this?

It's really quite simple. We don't have 14 individual kindergarten teachers, 15 individual 1st grade teachers, and 13 individual 2nd grade teachers. We have one TEAM of 14, a team of 15, and a team of 13 who see all the students in their grade as "our" students.

Being a team means they collaborate, agree, disagree, get mad, work through it, and after meeting every Monday morning, during prep and assembly times, they have a plan that includes every students in their grade level. They solicit help from reading and math specialists, they form their own grade-level intervention groups. The tell me they need a day to work together as a team and provide me with the rationale and expected outcomes that make so much sense that I have no choice but to tell them YES. How could I not? By telling them yes, I am helping these teams become stronger, closer, and more interdependent. And who benefits? Kiddos.

Being a team isn't just taking your take turn making copies. Being a team means if one person doesn't pull their weight, the whole team feels it. Being a team doesn't mean everyone is nice and happy and amicable. Being a team means you put aside your personal feelings and don't take it personal when everyone doesn't agree with you. You suck it up, look at the data, and do what's best for the students, not what makes you most comfortable.

I have teams who are exhausted, frustrated, yet excited. You will not find a 70% discrepancy between our highest and lowest performing teachers. Because they are locking elbows and academically moving these mountains of students together.

Remember a previous post about effect size, and how John Hattie identified a .40 as a normal year's growth? Well, Charter schools has an effect size of .20. Class size = .21. Principals/school leaders = .36; school effects = .48. But collective teacher efficacy, a team of teachers working together, believing that all their students can learn, has an effect size of 1.45.

Ah, now I can sleep at night. We've identified a solution and are working to remedy. Sweet dreams.

Learning targets in the classroom

Thanks to all of you who attended our Open House last night. As you were looking around the room, you might have noticed that teachers are posting "Learning Targets" sometimes called learning objectives. On the surface, it might appear simple and inconsequential. But let me break it down for you a little.... 
These targets are made up of three components: What, why, and the success criteria. Some teachers are using the same terminology:

I can _______ so that I can _______ . 
I'll know I mastered it when _______.

John Hattie (click name to see some research) is currently the leading researcher in the field of education. He has studied tens of thousands of research projects that involved over 200,000,000 kids all over the planet. Through this exhaustive study, he created a list of the most impactful (not a word, yet) teaching strategies (click to see some research). He identified strategies that, when correctly and consistently utilized by teachers, can help students make 2-3 years of growth during a school year. Without getting too much into the jargon, .40 growth = an average year's growth of a student with an average teacher. Anything over .40 growth is helping a student make more than a year's worth of growth in a school year. .80 means a student is making about 2 years of growth in one school year. Make sense? 

What does this have to do with learning targets? 

Here is the learning target, broken into three sections, aligned with some of Hattie's research on the what the effect of the strategy has on student growth:

I can _______________

Effect size:

• Self-efficacy (confidence they can do it) = .63
• goal setting = .68
• achieving approach = .70

• error transfer of new problems = .80

.....so that I can _______

Effect size:

• worked examples = .57
• problem-solving teaching = .61
• meta-cognitive strategies = .69
• teacher clarity = .75

I'll know I mastered it when _______.

Effect size:

• Feedback = .75
• providing formative evaluation = .90
• success criteria =1.13
• self-reported grades = 1.44

Teachers are doing everything they can to put the learning back on the learners. When students know what they are learning, why they're learning it, and how they can know they were successful, research shows students can show incredible growth.

What is your impact?

Our staff spent most of yesterday listening to me, and working with each other, focused on high-impact teaching strategies. These are those strategies that teachers can use that have been shown to be more powerful than poverty, home impact, parent involvement, etc. According to John Hattie,(click on name for research) there are 30+ things that teachers can do in their classrooms that trump whatever a students bring with them. And his most recent research shows that Teacher Collective Efficacy has a 1.56 effect size. 

The highest impact on student growth is having a team of teacher who work interdependently, believing that every student on their team can and will achieve. Hattie found that this strategy can yield 3 to 4 years of growth in a single school year.

The average teacher can increase a student one years' worth of growth, as long as that student comes from a middle class (or higher) home life, has parents who are involved and engaged with the student, and the student has a good relationship with the parents.

A team of teachers working together can make every student meet or exceed standard, regardless of the student's home life.

We have the moral obligation, as educators, that when we know better, we must do better. 

I have teams whose students will make the most amazing growth of their lives this year. 

I am so excited for Monday!