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The PLC at Work Process in Early Childhood Blended and Virtual Learning Environments, with your presenters Brian K. Butler, Jacqueline Heller, Tracey A. Hulen, and Diane Kerr.\n\nI'm your moderator and the editor for Solution Tree's marketing department. Solution Tree is your host today and we'll talk a little bit more about what they have to offer during this hour. Solution Tree is also the home of Travel-Free PD, our service that we've innovated as necessity dictated by recent circumstances to help you maximize efficacy and impact. All of the benefits you'd get from one of our live in person institutes and workshops you can now get from your very own tablet 1 to 1; your smartphone, your PC, whatever you've got.\n\nCheck us out at solutiontree.com and travelfreepd.com. We have some webinars on our website, much like today's. Recordings stay up there for as long as they need- they need to, and those are free.\n\nYou just go to solutiontree.com/webinars. We also have some fascinating book studies where the author of the book participates with the- the readers. Check those out. And now, it's time for me to turn it over to Brian, Jackie, Tracey, and Diane.\n\nAnd they are the authors of a book I imagine you might want to take a look at. It's called What About Us? The PLC at Work Process for Grades PreK-2 Teams. Presenters, welcome.\n\nWell, thank you Joel. And we wanted to thank edWeb and Solution Tree for hosting this webinar today, and we really wanted to thank you all, all the people from around the world who are joining us and taking time out of your busy schedules to learn with and from us today. If you want to follow us on Twitter, here are our Twitter handles. Feel free to tell our story for this next hours.\n\nEducators continue to tell our story. You've been wonderful since this pandemic happened and we need to tell the story of what- of our profession and how great our profession is. So please, please, please, Tweet away and use social media. So why are we here?\n\nWe're here for a number of reasons. One of the reasons why we're here, and probably the main reason why we're here, is because of Becky DuFour. Becky is- was our mentor, she was a dear friend. She was a colleague who challenged us to write this book.\n\nShe sat with us with us about 3 years ago in Charlottesville, Virginia and started this journey with us. Unfortunately, we lost Becky all too- all too soon, but her influence, her words, her passion are all over this book. The second reason why we wrote this book is because of you all, you all, educators like you from around the world. As we traveled around the world, we had so many pre-k, kindergarten, first grade, second grade teachers say, \"What about us?\n\nDoes this PLC at Work process have anything to do with us?\" Or, \"We want to be a part of this process but our principals, our administrators, our district offices, they are so focused on the testing grades that they kind of leave us alone.\" And so we say yes, this book has to be about you all, has to be about pre-k, kindergarten, first grade, second grade. This is where the magic happens and if we do it right here, then for the rest of our children's school career and throughout life, they're gonna be successful.\n\nSo this has to be about us. This is a school-wide process and we want to make sure that you all know that you're the most important piece to making sure all kids are successful. So Diane, do you want to kind of walk us through our learning outcomes for today? Yeah.\n\nThanks, Brian. Welcome everyone. Our webinar today consists of 4 parts. First, we're briefly going to talk about the foundation of how the Professional Learning Community at Work process ensures our focus of learning for all students.\n\nSecond part: we're gonna share some ideas for integrating essential standards, the learning we deem vital for all students, and integrating those essential standards across content areas, which includes social-emotional- social-emotional learning.\n\nPart 3: We're going to dig into some ways to increase student engagement through purposeful team planning of learning experiences and learning environments and specifically, our topic today, in that blended and\n\nvirtual environment.\n\nPart 4: we're gonna rethink assessments, take a fresh look at our assessment practices. We need to really explore developmentally appropriate assessments that will provide us with information we need to make instructional decisions for teaching and responding to student needs and also how to monitor that learning. So during each of these parts, we're going to provide some examples, tools, suggestions that we hope you'll take and adapt for your team, your school, or your district's needs. At the end of each section, we will give you time to reflect and make a commitment to action.\n\nSo make sure you have a pen, a piece of paper, or open an email to yourself, or any other method for you to remind yourself of your next steps on your learning journey. So Becky DuFour and her husband, Rick, would always ask us what's the first thing that a PLC does together? The answer is always learn together. Together, we're going to learn today and we will challenge you to continue to learn together with your colleagues for the benefit of your students.\n\nAnd I guarantee you, you're sure to make mistakes because we certainly have and we've made a lot of mistakes since March, but we've learned from them. So don't be afraid to try something new. You may stumble, you probably will, but you're gonna learn from that, so keep that growth mindset open and alive because that's what's going to keep us- keep us going. So let's start today with a question and a statement.\n\nDo you agree that it's our moral obligation to treat other people's children the same way we retreat our own? Meaning should we have the same expectations of other people's children who walk through our door as we would of our- of our own? You know, I've done this and asked this question to thousands of educators and I've never had anybody said, \"No, no, not Brian Butler. We're not gonna treat him the same way.\"\n\nAnd if we truly are in loco parentis, meaning in lieu of parents, when those kids come through our doors, or in this year's case, come through our screens, we need to make sure that we create the conditions in our school that allows kids to be successful and to have a life filled with endless possibilities. All means all, there are no asterisks. It doesn't matter who their parents are, it doesn't matter where they come from, what language they speak, we need to create the conditions where every single kid has a life filled with endless possibilities. And so how do we do that?\n\nHow do we make sure that all kids have a life filled with endless possibilities and opportunities? Well, we believe the best way to do this is through the Professional Learning Community at Work model. So when is a PLC at Work? Becky DuFour often said, \"Clarity precedes confidence,\" so let's make sure we're crystal clear.\n\nWhat is a Professional Learning Community at Work school or district? First of all, it's not a meeting, it's not a team, it's not a book club, it's not a time. It's a school-wide process. And there are certain elements of the school-wide process that the entire school has to embrace in order for us to do the right work.\n\nYou'll see on the screen \"Three Four Four.\" There are 3 big ideas that drive the work of a school-wide process- of this school-wide process. There are 4 pillars that serve as the solid foundation. And there are 4 critical questions that the teams work on at the micro level that really kind of drive everybody's work to make sure that we're working towards this mission of learning for all.\n\nAnd so let's go through these pretty quickly. Our Chapter 1 in our book is designed to help you explore those big ideas and 4 pillars at a deeper level, but let's kind of go through them very quickly. The first of the big ideas is a focus on learning. We have to be a focused, learning driven school.\n\nOur fundamental purpose is to kind of shift from did we teach it to did they learn it and how do we know. And if we are a focused learning school, then we have to be able to examine every\n\nsingle practice, policy, program, and procedure with the question: Is this helping more kids learn at high level?\n\nThe second big idea is: are we gonna create a collaborative culture? We know that there's no way that we can help all kids learn at high levels if we don't work together, so we're gonna create a collaborative culture and we're gonna take collective responsibility for every single child. There's no more your child or my child or your kid or my kid in our school. They're only all of our kids and we need to make sure we work like the dickens to get them there.\n\nAnd finally, we're gonna have a results orientation. That means that we're gonna use evidence-based practices to see if what we're doing is actually getting us closer to that mission of learning for all. Now, in order to solidify the school's thinking around the big ideas, leadership team, guiding coalition, whatever you want to call it, must engage the entire staff in addressing what we call creating the 4 pillars to create the solid foundation. Many of you all out there have created a mission statement, a shared purpose, a vision statement; collective commitments are something we'll talk about in a few minutes, The entire staff has to be involved in creating these 4 pillars.\n\nNow, again, the shared purpose, the mission; we know what our mission is. Our mission is to ensure high levels of learning for both the adults and the kids. Our shared vision, what do we hope to become? Can we paint a picture 3, 4, 5 years from now on a better future than we are experiencing today for our school.\n\nAnd collective commitments, this is the most misunderstood pillar. Collective commitments are not team norms. Team norms are working agreements that help those teams do the work. The collective commitments are the work.\n\nThe collect commitments are the 4 critical questions of learning that Diane's gonna talk about in a few seconds. And then the shared goals; how do we mark our progress? Do we have timelines and ways to mark our progress and goals to make sure that we're getting closer and closer to our mission and vision? And so Diane, let's talk a little bit about collective commitments, the work that we need to do as a school and as those teams to ensure that we're getting closer and closer to our mission of learning for all.\n\nYeah. So the 4 critical questions of learning, these are the work of collaborative teams. If your teams are not answering these questions together, then it's likely that your team isn't focused on the right work yet.\n\nSo those 4 questions are as follows.\n\nNumber 1: What do we want all students to learn? How do we know if all students have learned it?\n\nThat's question 2.\n\nQuestion 3: How will we respond when some students don't learn?\n\nAnd Question 4: How will we extend the learning for students who have already demonstrated proficiency? So you'll see on this graphic here that that each of these questions has a specific set of tasks in which teams must engage. This is the right work of teams. Now, our book goes into depth on each of these tasks and each of these questions.\n\nToday, we'll touch on each question with our limited time with you today briefly. But this is the work of teams, answering these 4 critical questions of learning. So we're coming to the end of Part 1 of our webinar and we'd like to give you 1 minute to reflect on this first learning outcome. So take these questions that are on the slide as a guide to your thinking or jot down anything that you'd like to explore and make a commitment to action.\n\nJot it down or you can even add it to the- to the chat box if you like, but this is your time to reflect and make a note to yourself. One minute. Yeah. Okay.\n\nFinish up your thought. We'll come back in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Okay. So as we move on to Part 2, we're going to focus on looking at those essential standards across content areas, which includes integrating social-emotional learning.\n\nIs that Jackie or Tracey? Are you gonna take it away? Jackie. So \"What About Us?\"\n\nthe title of our book, came from someone asking that question, and there are many districts where preschool, and often kindergarten, are set up separately from the rest of K through 12 education. Your curriculum might look different than the rest of K through 12 education. So what we're gonna do is challenge you in the coming 45 minutes or so to really think about what was your curriculum like before the pandemic and are you focusing on the things that will most help your students be successful this year of all years? So we have a graphic that has 4 different domains on it that we're gonna work on a lot, and as you see each one, think about which components should you bring to your team and discuss and problem solve together how can we refine what we're focusing on in order to best help our students succeed this year and all years?\n\nSo in Chapter 2 of our book, we focus on key components of the early childhood curriculum that Jackie just talked about, which are the 4 learning domains; social-emotional learning; and students' physical, language, and cognitive development. And in order to meet the needs of the whole child, teams need to identify essential standards in each of these 4 learning domains. Not only do we need to think about that first critical question of learning- what do we want our students to learn- but we also must think about the important aspects of both the physical and the cultural environments whether the students are learning in person or in a distance learning setting and really determine the learning materials that are needed to engage our youngest learners.\n\nAnother consideration are those learning experiences and the learning formats that we provide for our students. And finally, we're gonna touch upon what assessment practices and assessment methods that we can use to direct our instruction and monitor our students' learning. So in Chapter 2 of our book \"What about Us?\" we provide tools to help teams evaluate their core curriculum and focus on ways to strengthen and really improve upon it.\n\nAnd this year more than ever, it's gonna be critical that teams really work together to determine how we will provide this quality instruction to all learners. And let's just take a look at this chart and notice how when teams are engaging in the work of selecting essential standards, it becomes the driving force that connects to additional team tasks when answering the 4 critical questions of learning. And within our book, we share ideas about the process of identifying these essential standards and how to unwrap them to gain a common understanding of what students really need to learn. And\n\nwe focused on these essential standards and how they can be used to help us create learning progressions and common formative assessments and even student self-assessment tools, such as goal cards, which we're gonna talk about later on in our presentation. Additionally, in Chapter 7, the book gives specific examples and team tools for planning highly engaging lessons that are focused around these essential standards, and Brian's gonna talk a little bit more about that. Well, I think that in this time of going back to school after we've missed so much time, we know that when we talk about essential standards, we're gonna have to narrow it even more.\n\nAnd we're not saying that we're not gonna cover the vast majority of the curriculum, but we can't reteach the vast majority of the curriculum. And so when you see that heart where it says \"Need to Know Essential Standards,\" you see that heart, the analogy is that the entire curriculum is your body, right? And so let's say those nice to know standards are my- your hair. Now, do we like our hair?\n\nOf course. Do we need our hair? Well, obviously not because I don't have any hair. But the heart is something that we have to have in order to to stay alive.\n\nAnd so when we talk about need to know essential standards, those vital essential standards, that's something that every single kid needs to master in order to be successful in the next unit, the next grade level, and eventually, in life. So what we're gonna really need to do is think about how we can integrate the curriculum across these 4 learning domains we talked about as much as possible and really focus the learning on these vital essential standards that Brian just talked about, and it's gonna be critical for teams to think about ways that they can integrate among these learning domains as well as within these learning domains, especially with reduced synchronous time with students in a virtual setting.\n\nSo let's go ahead and start to take a look at how we might be able to begin to do this. Here, we know that determining how to effectively balance social-emotional learning and academic content is going to be really important and it's going to be challenging during the pandemic. And you can see on the screen, here's an example of a student SEL goal card and first, a set of vital essential standards were identified and then the team made them into student friendly learning targets. So notice how these learning targets progress or build upon each other in the student goal card.\n\nThis student goal card is something that could be used during in person instruction or virtual learning to really engage and motivate and help us to give some feedback. And I really want to talk about how we can start to look at what that integrated approach looks like. So what does it actually look like to integrate the learning domains? Take a look at how this interactive picture graph focuses on both math and social-emotional skills and concepts and think about the typical survey questions we\n\nuse with our young learners: What's your favorite ice cream flavor or what's your favorite sport? But notice how in this example that we're able to simultaneously hit both math and these social-emotional learning skills and concepts. And just take a moment to think about how you might be able to integrate maybe science or social studies concepts into your morning meetings or morning messages and think about how to really be creative and work with your team to find various ways to integrate the curriculum as much as possible. And I'm gonna turn it over to Jackie.\n\nSo when we introduced the idea of learning domains in that first chart, there was physical, cognitive, social-emotional, but the one that we haven't really addressed yet is language, and especially in the early childhood years, developing their language is critical. And this is one way if you're going to try and integrate the curriculum, if you work on their language development, it's going to improve all those other domains. So you might have noticed if you did virtual learning in the spring that having good teacher wait time in a virtual setting, it's a lot harder than it is in person, isn't it?\n\nThat dead air space is really painful. So one of the things you might consider doing is teaching these academic conversation skills, even to our youngest learners, at the beginning of this school year. So the 4 of us were colleagues at Mason Crest Elementary in Annandale and this is something that we started doing several years ago when we were doing in person instruction, and I can't tell you how exciting it is to walk into a kindergarten classroom by November and hear them saying, \"I'd like to piggyback on top of what Jose said,\" because they really do internalize these and it helps them express their thoughts in a much more clear way and show higher order thinking.\n\nSo these ideas come from a book called Academic Conversations and it shows that there are 5 core conversation skills that everyone needs, and you see in this chart they are bulleted kind of in ascending order of difficulty. So the first one you might try to teach is how to elaborate and clarify, so we teach kids to stretch out what they're saying using this motion. The next one is how to support ideas with examples. And it goes on.\n\nAnd the procedure that we use is you first want to actually tell them what its called, \"We're gonna teach you to elaborate.\" Four year olds, 5 year olds can understand that. And then practice it with the cognitive load dialed down, so that means not with new content, but maybe in a social setting. So you tell them something like, \"Brownies are the best dessert.\n\nCan you elaborate on that idea?\" and give them a chance to practice. Once they can do it with the cognitive load dialed down, then try it in an academic context. And then number 4- fourth step is really the most important- you have to make sure that they have an opportunity to transfer this and add it to their repertoire.\n\nSo are you going to have an icon and you put that on your screen or on your board to remind them when it's time to elaborate? Are you gonna use that word in morning message and give them opportunities to practice that new skill? So I think you're gonna really see students take this on and improve all their content areas once they improve their language development. And another thing that might help doing that is using sentence frames or sentence starters.\n\nSo you can see here this is the one I was referring to, students learn to add onto another's idea by saying, \"I want to piggy back on.\" I caution you, don't get too excited about these and try and teach a whole bunch of them. Choose maybe 2 at a time and once you actually hear students using them regularly, then teach another one or two and again, having a visual Think about all the students who are just shy or language learners or have language delays and they're gonna be so much more apt to share their thoughts, and we really do need to create a sense of community with our students who are learning in a virtual environment, so encouraging as much talking, sharing, interacting as possible.\n\nSo teach economic conversation skills and consider using sentence frames are probably my top 2 tips for you today. So that's gonna bring us to the end of our second outcome, which was thinking about integrating. So we're gonna give you a minute to think about which pieces of this are you gonna take away. How are you gonna integrate?\n\nWhat are your next steps for your team? All right finish up that thought and join us as we move on to our next learning outcome. We're gonna think about student engagement, and I think that is a piece that was really lacking in the spring for a lot of people. We kind of invited students to continue learning but we didn't have an expectation that everybody had availability.\n\nSo how can we make sure that now that we've got everybody set up to learn in a virtual or blended environment that they're staying with us and continuing to learn and being highly engaged, because we know how important that is to get high levels of learning for all. So we're gonna kind of combine these next 2 columns of the chart because it's the beginning of the school year. And if you think about what you would do in a normal school year where you're teaching in your physical classroom, you spend so much time preparing that learning environment, setting up that classroom, getting everything set with your materials and the physical environment, and you're doing it so that you can have great learning experiences in that environment so they really do go hand in hand.\n\nSo the first part of setting up the learning environment, you need to think about the physical environment, and there is a physical environment whether students are in school physically with you or whether they are in their home, their physical environment, and you're doing virtual learning; the cultural environment making sure that, especially this year during distance learning, that families are valued and part of this learning process; and then the learning materials that are available in the environment. So what we have here is a little chart to help you think through which of these things do you need to consider.\n\nAnd if you go to Solution Tree's website, you can see the address in the bottom right corner of the screen, there are reproducibles from our book that are now available, so you're gonna see charts such as this one that might be useful for you. So thinking about that physical environment; if the physical environment for you this year is that you are in one place and your students are in another, you've seen the bitmoji craze take over the educational world, but you may not have seen that some people are now replacing the bitmoji with a live picture of themselves. And so if you Google how to do that, there's lots of tutorials out there.\n\nIt seems very easy to do. Think about how important it is for your students to see your face. The teacher is the number one thing that makes a difference in students' lives, so anything you can do to make sure that they're seeing your face, please consider it. And I know if you- if, you know, being on video is new to you and putting your face out there, we're all uncomfortable for that- with that, but we kind of need to get over it because our students need us to.\n\nSo once this teacher used her live bitmoji, she also found ways to make those into stickers. So if you are accepting work assignments virtually, you can put those stickers on and share them with students. And then the bottom left corner showed some teachers actually using the real materials that are in their classroom. So yes, you're learning so many new technological skills and you're gonna incorporate that into your lessons in order to raise engagement, but don't forget about all those things that worked for you in the classroom.\n\nSo if students are comfortable and familiar with you using a whiteboard and a marker and writing your agenda and your morning message on that, use those things. If you've got your pop cubes from your math manipulative kit, hold them up to the camera and use those things. So don't feel like you need to do everything so high tech. And then when we're thinking about the learning environment, we also need to consider the cultural aspect of that.\n\ntell us more. Sure. So Jackie just did a really nice job talking about the physical environment, and it's equally important for us to focus on the cultural environment of your classroom. So what components of a culturally responsive learning environment are important, especially when we're thinking about the virtual environment?\n\nAre there specific classroom routines or rituals that could be used to support a culture of learning and how can we create an environment that is intellectually and socially safe for learning? So consider how can we really start to begin to make space for students' voice and agency, 'cause we really know that students must become leaders of their own learning and as teachers, it's our job to foster that. So we want to take a little bit of time to also talk about learning materials because that's part of the learning environment as well. And when we're thinking about this, we know what's developmentally appropriate for a student in the upper grades in a remote learning environment is probably not the same for a kindergartener, right?\n\nSo while we can't control the home learning environment, we certainly can do our best to impact it, and parents are really gonna be our essential partners in supporting our youngest learners. So trying things such as teaching parents about flexible seating options and effective reading strategies and model how to interact with some of these materials. And you know, while it's important to ensure that our students have devices and broadband for distance learning, it's equally important that we find ways to get these physical materials, like books and math manipulatives and play materials, into the hands of our youngest learners.\n\nWe really know that students' higher level thinking skills begin to transform and grow and develop through these experiences with concrete materials, especially during play. So we know many schools are starting to begin to figure out safe ways to have students check out physical materials, maybe in the form of take home bags or student toolkits, things of that nature. And once you've got the physical environment set up, whether that's in your classroom or virtually, the next thing you're gonna be thinking about is planning all those valuable, rich, meaningful learning experiences. And one of the tips that I think is especially important to consider now is the idea of 10 and 2 Chunk and Chew.\n\nKind of fun to say, 10 and 2 Chunk and Chew. What it means is there's been research that's been done that shows that every 10 minutes, we basically need to fight for attention, we need to grab their attention back. And so no matter the age of the student, we really can't go for more than 10 minutes. And for those of you working with our youngest learners, you're probably saying, \"Ten minutes?\n\nThat would be golden if I could go for 10 minutes.\" You're used to going for 3 to 5. But at any rate, when you're planning out what- however much time you have with your students, if you plan direct instruction only, you're not planning for those really important times for students to chew and process and think and reflect and share and engage and really deepen their learning. So what you're seeing here is a planning form on the left that you could consider using.\n\nSo if you plan out I'm gonna have direct instruction for 10 minutes, then also plan out what are you going to do next so the students can chew on it, and it might look different in a virtual environment. It's a little bit more challenging, you can't just have students turn and talk, but you can do a break out room for 2 minutes where they can talk to another student. You can have physical things that they can hold up and show you, so- they can jot things down. So what are you gonna do so that you know you aren't going to fill the time with teacher talk and you're giving students adequate time to chew and process and think and learn?\n\nAnd then on the bottom right, you see a way to break up 1 hour with students, and I think most districts are coming up with a plan for students who are working virtually but for the most part, the people that we've seen are breaking it up so that they're online for no more than 1 hour at a time and then have a break. So if you have an hour, are you integrating as much as possible? So could you do a 10 minute chunk on language arts followed by some time for students to chew and do an activity and then when you return, do language arts integrated with social studies? Or could you ingrate math and science?\n\nSo be thinking purposefully about how you're planning for those chunks across the curriculum. And then also think about the energy level of the tasks that you're asking students to do, and it's kind of one of the beautiful things of blended and virtual learning is you can set up your schedule a little bit differently. Most people have more flexibility than they did in their- in their regular classroom because we have co-teachers that would come in at a certain time or we had to be ready to share students across classes. But what you see on the top is an ideal schedule where you have students alternating between high and low energy tasks.\n\nSo if it was a different version, if we say we had 4 of those green low energy tasks in a row, what do you think the behaviors would be by the time you try and do something in the fifth box? Probably much less successful than if you're able to alternate it. So planning for the chunks, planning for the chews, and thinking through what is the energy level expected would really increase student engagement. So we know the use of virtual images and games alone will not be adequate for a child's overall learning development.\n\nLooking at a 3D shape on a tablet is just not the same as physically exploring or touching or even building with 3D dimensional objects. So take a moment to look at the first column on this chart and think about how to increase engagement. Let's say with a typical read aloud, whether it's pre-recorded or if the students are virtually occurring live in a face to face format, we can raise the level of the engagement when we make that read aloud interactive by asking questions and modeling thinking aloud and using visuals such as story maps or character cards. So that's one example.\n\nAnother example, you can see in the Mathematics column, think about how we could take a slide presentation about geometric concepts and raise the level of engagement and get our young students up in moving in their own learning environment. Sure, videos, they could be very effective, but consider having the teacher maybe show a real world geometric shape in their own learning environment and possibly asking students to go on a shape hunt in their own homes. And it's gonna be really important that as a team, you're gonna want to evaluate your learning tasks or experiences and then you're gonna want to think about ways to lift that engagement beyond just presentation slides and videos.\n\nAnd Jackie talked a little bit about transitions and the importance of transitions, and here's an example of some transitions that help increase or a decrease energy during the learning time. And one example in the middle, you can see a dice pattern or a 10 frame image and think about how you could have students use exercise or body movements to help the blood start flowing to the brain and support that cognitive function. And not only are you focusing on math skills, but you're also using this to help increase energy. And let's just say that you had your students go on that shape hunt in their house and you want them to become grounded and focused and calm, you may consider using a transition that decreases their energy, such as maybe holding up their 5 fingers, imagining that they're candles, and as they blow each candle out, they can use counting back math skills.\n\nAnd this then can also become a self-regulation strategy for calming that students can put into their own social-emotional toolkit, which is great. And what I've been thinking about lately is that, you know, we have really as educators come up with some great learning formats that really engage our young learners and they build on communication and their cognitive skills, and you need to continue to do all of these great things, even in a remote learning environment. All of these experiences can help improve student engagement during in person learning. And we can just take some of these and modify them in the distance learning setting.\n\nAnd if you take a look, there are some ideas about student choice, about balancing the high and low cognitive demand tasks, building relationships. These practices are needed, they're necessary, and they're really important to consider when planning students' learning experiences. So now it's time to take a break and we're gonna reflect on our learning outcome. All right.\n\nAnd I'm gonna pass it off to Jackie. Actually, I'm gonna take that one, Jackie. Jackie and Tracey, thank you. Those were some awesome ideas.\n\nAnd now that we've moved into our last section of the webinar, Part 4, we're gonna- we're going to think about that- those questions, critical questions, of learning 2, 3, and 4. How do we know that students have learned and how to respond if they haven't learned. And not to forget to extend that learning if students are already proficient. So coming back to this graphic that you've seen already today, we're moving into the fourth pillar, and this is about formative assessments, that assessment for learning and respond immediately to student results.\n\nWe've broken this, the formative assessment, into 2 sections, assessment practices and assessment methods, and they're detailed in our book. We're gonna touch on those today in the little bit of time we have left. And what we'd like you to kind of come back to is this idea that the pandemic has really forced our hand to reflect and rethink what we do and why we do it, and this is especially true for assessment, whether it's for our preschoolers, kindergartners, first graders, second graders, ninth graders, seventh graders. We really have to rethink this idea of how we're going to engage our students and parents in the process and specifically what actions will teams take that are going to be effective and efficient for truly identifying have our students learned those vital standards that our team has identified.\n\nSo let's go ahead and dig into that. We'll pass it. back to Jackie and Tracey. So when we talk about assessments in our book, I think there is a table at the Panera with Tracy and I's name forever engraved on it because we went back and forth so much on this chapter and it eventually got split into 2 chapters because you just can't cover assessment for early childhood in a short amount of time.\n\nAssessment for kindergartners at the beginning of the school year looks very different than it does even by the end of the school year, which is different than it looks in first and second grade. So we're just gonna give you a brief overview, but this is something that is near and dear to our heart and so important because assessment just means that you are collecting information that's gonna help you be a better teacher for those kids and help their learning. So it doesn't mean a test. So what you're seeing in this graphic is how we eventually organized the 2 chapters around assessment.\n\nSo the first thing you're thinking about is what is your assessment techniques, and observation is used so much in early childhood. It is just as valid as a computerized, standardized test. So collecting observations about what students know and are able to do; that could be done through interviews with students where you're asking them purposeful questions, it could be done in conferences where you're creating a dialogue with them and taking notes, and it could also be done when students are ready to do independent response, they could provide their answers themselves. Once you've decided what assessment technique you're gonna use to collect your information, then you need to think about what is the task that the student is actually gonna do.\n\nIs it that you're gonna be scoring an action that they perform? So that could be they're reading a book and you have- you're taking a running record and collecting information about their accuracy, so you're watching the action of them performing it. It could be that you hand them the colored bears and ask them to sort them in 2 different ways. Or are you gonna be scoring some product that you ask them to produce?\n\nSo you give them a math problem, you give them a project to do, you create a portfolio of their work. So which of those 2 is the best fit for the standard that you're considering? And then once you know the technique you're gonna use and the task the students are gonna do, that last step is thinking about what is the data collection tool that you're gonna use? Is it that the student is going to be recording, so a pencil and paper or a computer based tests and that's how you'll get the data because they're recording it independently?\n\nOr is the teacher recording it? And if so, has your team developed some kind of common checklist or rubric or learning progression or chart so that the data that you collect has interrater reliability across the team? And then that last one is you could use some form of evaluation. So some of the ones that I mentioned could be an evaluation for a data collection.\n\nSo if you think about those 3 and all the different combinations you could do, you can do that no matter the environment. So if you are in a virtual environment, you can do a video conference one on one with a student. You could do a small group where you're observing them doing the task and you have a checklist in front of you and you're making note of which students are able to show that they are proficient in that task. Then you only have to do the conference with the one or two students that didn't show you during small group.\n\nSo be thinking flexibly and just remember that the goal is to collect good information that helps you target your instruction and helps students learn at high levels. So we're gonna broaden our definition of what we're thinking about assessments. And then thinking about how you're gonna give feedback to the students once you have those assessments. So if you look on the top left hand corner, that's how most of us got feedback when we were going through school.\n\nSo I got a score of 63%, I know I got 19 out of 30 questions right. Not feeling great about that. That 69%, that doesn't mean that I'm proficient at all. So I didn't do well, I don't think I'm good at whatever this content area was.\n\nNow think about the one below that. I still got a 63%, but when I align it to each of the learning targets that were on that assessment, now I know I got 10 out of 10 on the first learning target. I rocked that. I got 8 out of 10 I'm still proficient.\n\nI'm feeling great about that. There was one learning target I haven't yet mastered, but I know if I've mastered those other two, I can do that third one, too. That is an entirely different reaction to the feedback that's given to me. They're both a 63%, but think about the impact that's gonna have on students.\n\nEven better, look over to the right, and if I know exactly which questions on an assessment aligned with which learning target, I could go back and check and see what does that make sense, how did- how did I do. And think about the power of sharing this information so that parents have access to it, too, for our youngest students. So tie your assessment to your feedback. And saved the best for this last slide.\n\nSo Brian has been doing breakout sessions on this topic for several years and I cannot tell you how many emails he's forwarded to me, \"Can you send our goal cards to this person and can you send our goal cards to that person?\" This is a game changer. Yeah. We wanted to think about how we could best give feedback to students, how we can motivate them, how we can make them aware of their learning targets.\n\nOne of the quotes that we love that Becky used to say is, \"A student can hit any target as long as they know what it is and it holds still for them.\" So how could we share those learning targets with students? And we started using goal cards, and they actually started with our kindergarten and it spread to first, second, third, fourth, fifth, it went all the way up the line. So all students were using them for something in some content area.\n\nBut the idea is you've taken a learning standard, you've broke it down into a specific target and a learning progression, you put that on a- on a piece of cardstock, cut it up, it looks like a little bookmark, and add some visuals that make sense to the students. We were doing a lot of work with growth mindset and so you can see the very creepy brain which our first grade team really liked because they were teaching them that you can grow your brain by doing these things. You can see the flower image was to show that, you know, it integrated with the science unit that they were doing that you start out as a seed and then a sprout and you grow and bloom.\n\nSo teaching students that it doesn't matter where you are, it matters that you're moving forward. And that's what we do as teachers is we meet them wherever they are and move them forward. So these can be used in such a variety of ways no matter your environment. So if you are in a virtual environment and you put that on the screen and you remind them of what working towards, if you're doing conferencing with students, you can do an assessment and then show them on their goal card where they are.\n\nWhen we used them in person, our teachers had a star hole punch from the craft store and they actually punched them out when they reached a new goal on their goal card. They got adapted over time, and so for some literacy standards you never really get completely proficient at it, you need to keep practicing that skill at more complex teachers would just tally whenever they saw evidence of students using those strategies. So really flexible on how you use them, but think about how they motivate, how they engage, how they could be used for assessment, they could be used for feedback, and they could be shared with parents so parents really understand where we're going with that.\n\nAnybody else want to jump in on the power of these goal cards before we move on? They really are a fan favorite. Yeah, they're just huge. When I presented around the country, this is the number one thing that everybody asked for because it really did help kids own their learning and it took away the excuses because we had some people would say, you know, third and fourth grade- you know, graders are too young to set goals, but then we have our kindergarten teachers starting this process and then it takes away the excuses.\n\nThese kids own their learning once we created these goal cards. Yep. If I could add to that, I see a question in the- in the chat about where can we get a copy of these goal cards. One thing I'd like to say about is the power is in the teamwork around taking the standard and unpacking that standard and thinking about what are the learning targets we can- We have these goal cards and examples in our book as a guide for your thinking to see what they can look like, but really, creating these cards together as a team is where the power of the work lies.\n\nAnd they are available as reproducibles on the Solution Tree website, the ones that are in our book, so you can go there to get a few more examples. But yes, creating- understanding the standard and the learning progression and creating them on your own. All right. Tracey.\n\nSo I'm gonna go really quickly because I'm looking at the time, and Jackie did a really nice job talking about assessment. Here's an example of some common formative assessments in math. You can see in the first column there is a picture of bicycles and students would be asked to determined how many wheels there are, so they- it would require them to count by 2s. You can see that could maybe happen in a whole group setting.\n\nIn a small break out group, it might be good to have students write numbers and have them hold them up on white boards or on papers to help you collect data. And if you're not able to gather some of that data during whole group or small group instruction, you might even want to think about during your weekly phone calls, if that's something that you do to connect with your students, to take some time to get that information then. So our example is, you know, having them rote count and collecting that data over the phone. So it's going to be really important to be thinking about having some type of system for record keeping and also how is your team going to not only collect the data but take time to analyze the data.\n\nSo you can see in this example, what the teacher did was as they were collecting the information, they put it into this team assessment tool, which it has multiple essential standards on it. And then they were able to put the data in there and use a- use color coding as a way to track student proficiency. So that's really a great thing and something like counting, which is foundational, would be something that would occur through the whole year. And Jackie talked about these goal cards, so here's an example of a goal card with this idea of counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s that students could use to monitor their own learning.\n\nBut then on the right side of the slide, you see the teacher assessment tool in a learning progression and how they're able to use this to keep track of students' learning, and you can see that they put the student's name where they're at with proficiency and you can actually see that growth over time. So the last thing that we want to do is think about how we can use this information that we've collected to differentiate for students and plan really targeted, engaging lessons. That's all the time we have for tonight, so that's a whole different topic. But know that that is the end goal, that's why we're collecting the information and we want to use those formative assessments.\n\nWe don't ever want to assess a student and collect data if we're not gonna actually use it. So we are going to not play the music and give you time to reflect, but just stop for a second so that we can finish up. But thinking about this last outcome, where are you with assessments with your team and your students and what might you want to make sure that you share with your team that you take- you're taking away tonight? The power of any professional development is that it actually changes our practices.\n\nSo be thinking about that while Diane finishes up. Yes. So to wrap up, the only way we can do this work is to do it together. It is truly our collective responsibility.\n\nAnd for our little guys, it's teaming up with our parents. They are a huge part of our team and making sure, especially for the virtual- for those of you teaching virtually, they're the ones at home who are gonna help support our kids. So just very, very briefly looking at these 5 bullets, please think about these things. Please presume positive intentions from your families.\n\nI truly believe, and I know our whole team believes, that every single parent wants to support their students. Sometimes the way it looks and sounds and feels is different from what our picture is and what that should look like, but it's okay. it's their family, it's their world. They are there, they love their kids, and they want to be part of that support.\n\nHow are we communicating? Specifically, have you asked all of your parents what's the best way to communicate? One way is not going to meet every single parent's needs. Do they need translations?\n\nIt's our responsibility, it's a federal responsibility, too, to provide communication in the parents' preferred language. Provide a predictable schedule. Encourage academic conversations. Provide the tools that we're using with our kids to the parents.\n\nHow are we going to do that? Work with your team and talk about that. And remember, parents are not the learning police. Their- Kids don't want to think that the parents are hovering over them.\n\nWe want the kids to feel free to learn and to engage and the reality is if we're teaching them virtually, they're not going to be engaged and concentrating 5 to 6 hours a day, it's not even- that's not even gonna happen. It's okay. Just give yourself that. Just say, \"It's okay, team.\n\nIt's not gonna happen.\" But our team includes our parents. Right. Sure and so we're gonna finish up and we'll take some questions for the last couple of minutes, but I like this quote from Rick DuFour, and it really kind of speaks to our profession.\n\nYou know, we work hard. I don't know any one of our educators, our teachers, that I've ever worked with who doesn't work hard. The question is will we work hard and fail or will we work hard and succeed? At the beginning of our session today, Diane said, you know, how do we make decisions as a professional learning community?\n\nWe start that decision-making process by learning together. Learning together. We're gonna build this collaborative culture. And so we might not have all the answers, but we're gonna put everybody in the room and try to figure out the answer.\n\nThe answer is in the room or the room is the answer. So let's make sure that we learn together. Give yourself grace, extend grace to yourself this year. If there were any other- any time that you should extend grace to yourself, it's this time.\n\nIf there's any time to make mistakes and feel free to make mistakes, it is this time. Lean on each other and we know we can get through this. We know that we're gonna get through this and be stronger for it. But remember, it's not about an individual teacher, it's about a collective endeavor where we can work together and figure it out as a team, as a school, to make sure that we ensure high levels of learning for every single child in order for them to have a life filled with endless possibilities and endless opportunities.\n\nSo we'll take some questions. Joel, do you want to jump back in? I'm here and I've got the questions. Let's get right to it.\n\nBut before I do, given the time, can everybody stay after class for a few minutes? Sure. Perfect. Let's start with Sonia's question.\n\nHow can stand alone after school programs or family childcare benefit from these ideas? That's a great question. And so what we would say is, you know, there are different teams structures and different structures that the Professional Learning Community at Work model says that we can- we can adhere to in order for us to connect with other people. There are electronic teams, if there are other stand alones that are near you, please feel free to contact them.\n\nWe want you to have a job-like partner and if you're the only person or the only school, then try to contact somebody who's near you and visit them. Become a a team with another school to learn from and with each other. And so you know, we say that there's no yeah, buts. If you're by yourself, then, you know, reach out and try to find somebody else who looks like you and who can, you know, learn with and from you.\n\nAny other questions? Yes indeed. We'll move onto the next question, which comes from Milica,\n\nwho asks: which book would have the skills of language development charts that were shown in this webinar? Academic Conversations. Perfect.\n\nOkay. Nancy would like to know: How much time does it usually take to determine essential standards? Can it be done in a day, a week? Great question.\n\nJackie? Tracey? I'll take that. So we've seen teams do it a variety of ways, one option is at the beginning of the year to look at your essential standards.\n\nWe actually physically cut them apart, printed them out, had 2 circles on the table and physically sorted them into this one's a nice to know, this one's a need to know. We did it for all the standards in one content area in one sitting and then came back and did it for all the standards in another content area on another day. So once you've done that, the next step is then to map them across the year and think about during which unit or which grading period are you gonna ensure proficiency on each of those standards. is to make sure that we have those vertical conversations.\n\nAnd so to make sure that if, you know, second grade is looking at first grade because, you know, first grade might identify an essential standard and second grade would say, \"Well, that's not- that's a nice to know. That's not essential.\" So we want to make sure sure we have a great scope and sequence and have that vertical piece in place. And we go into great depth in our book about this and we give teachers great ideas, examples, and tools of just how to do this work.\n\nAll right. Well, our next question comes from Lizzie,\n\nwho asks: Should we schedule time for kids to play together virtually? I like that idea. I feel as if- you know, Jackie talked a lot about language skills and using sentience frames and just the importance of seeing another peer, seeing your teacher, being able to when you're at play, ask questions to each other, it's not only focusing on language skills, but there's a lot of play skills with that, too. So I feel as if any way you could be creative in figuring out- We- None of us have have all the answers.\n\nIn fact, this is new for all of us. So I think as educators, we have to really communicate and share ideas across the nation and globally of how to do this great work. And in our book, we talk a lot about the power of learning through play. I think there's some dialogue out there that you either have to be learning or playing, but the idea of learning through play is really important.\n\nEach chapter starts with a a scenario of what a team is doing, and so one of the scenarios really is explicitly showing how when the students are playing, the thing that changes is when the student- when the teacher slides up next to them and asks a question, they're now still playing but they're learning through that play. And so it's our behaviors and what we're doing that changes and turns it into a learning opportunity. So yes, schedule time for them to play. But also when you're thinking about your lessons, thinking about how can they play and still be learning and meeting this objective.\n\nOur final question tonight comes from Judy who\n\nasks: What can you do if the learning expectations for your students are a great number and you would like to use goal cards? So I think the first thing is determining which of those learning expectations are the essentials, and then for this year, which of those essentials are the most vital essentials and start there. So you really want to start small and introduce the idea to students of what a goal is and model that and get them excited about using the goal card in one area, and then that gives you time to develop some goal cards for other standards in other content areas. And that goal card becomes the data collection tool that not only can you be talking with the student about their learning and their growth, but that's also a way for you to collect that data.\n\nAll right. And with that answer, we have come to the end of our webinar and it's been a great hour of information, but if there's more you want to learn, we encourage you to bring 1, 2, or- why not- all 4 of our presenters to your school or district. They like working together, I'm sure they will share the stage. We've been together for years.\n\nYou have been together for years. That would be done at the solutiontree.com website under Request PD. And while you're at the website, I invite you to look around.\n\nCheck out our books, videos, webinars, professional development, our events, which are currently virtual, but we are hoping with a reasonable end to this pandemic to have live events again. If you're familiar with the site, thank you. If you haven't checked us out, yet please do because we are there to help you do what you do well. So please do check out solutiontree.com.\n\nSo with that, it just remains for me to thank our presenters, Brian K. Butler, Jackie Heller, Tracey A. Hulen, and Diane Kerr. And thanks to all of you who came and joined us today.\n\nThanks to Regina, our producer at edWeb, and Jesse Loudenbarger, our program manager. This is Joel Pierson, your moderator, saying stay safe, stay healthy, and keep on doing those things you do. Have a good night everybody. 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