Texas State Literacy Plan (TSLP) Online Course – Implementation Module Lesson 5 Transcript Narrator Since we last saw the campus-­‐based leadership team at ABC Elementary School, they have completed the implementation of their plan. Now they are ready to go on to step 5 and 6 – to assess their implementation and determine their next steps. Ms. Jackson Thanks, everyone, for all your hard work on our plan. Mr. Winters So I guess now it’s time to talk about how we did, right? Ms. Montero Yes, our goal today is to look at step 5 and step 6. Mr. Green That’s right. We started a bit of step 5 while we were implementing our plan—by monitoring our progress and making adjustments along the way. Ms. Montero Now we need to look at the second part of step 5 where it basically asks did we do what we planned to do and was it effective. Ms. Crimson Let’s look at each of those questions separately. First, does evidence show we implemented what we originally planned? Mr. Winters Well, if you look at our timeline, you see all of those action items highlighted. Ms. Montero Yes, everything we listed on the timeline up to now has been done, plus some things we added as we went along. Mr. Winters We should also look at our planning pages. Did we do what we said we would do there? Ms. Jackson Good question. Let’s look at this. © 2014 Texas Education Agency/The University of Texas Systems 1 Texas State Literacy Plan (TSLP) Online Course – Process Module Lesson 5 Transcript Narrator The team reviews the planning pages of their TSLP Implementation Plan. They first turn their attention to the “Planning for implementation” section and the actions they listed there. Ms. Montero Hmmm, look at number 3. We said we would model the agenda with all data meetings and begin to facilitate implementation. Mr. Green Yeah, at first we thought we would get to that this semester. Ms. Crimson But when we made our timeline, we indicated that we would need to revisit this in the fall, remember? Ms. Montero Oh, that’s right! Mr. Green So for the most part, we did the things we said we would do. Mr. Winters Okay, so now let’s look at the next piece. Does evidence indicate that our implementation was effective? Ms. Crimson Let’s look at what we said we wanted to achieve. Narrator The team reviews what they described as evidence for success in the “Defining Expected Outcomes” section of the planning pages. Mr. Green We definitely have evidence of the second bullet here: “Professional development that is tied to identified needs among the staff is scheduled.” Mr. Winters Yes, we have the needs assessment data that we collected and analyzed. Ms. Crimson And we have the schedule for professional development based on the needs we found. © 2014 Texas Education Agency/The University of Texas Systems 2 Texas State Literacy Plan (TSLP) Online Course – Process Module Lesson 5 Transcript Narrator The team reviews the other outcomes that they listed in their plan and finds that they have not been achieved. Ms. Montero I know that some of these were long-­‐term goals, but I have to admit I feel a little disappointed that we only met one of our outcomes. Mr. Winters Yeah, I feel like we did so much work, yet we didn’t accomplish our goals. Ms. Jackson Well, let’s look at it another way. Perhaps we weren’t realistic about what the outcomes of this phase of our work would look like. Ms. Crimson Yes, the first outcome we listed—“Teachers begin to follow the model agenda for data meetings”—that can’t take place until after we provide the professional development and modeling in the fall. Ms. Montero So . . . I guess that first one was actually a long-­‐term goal because we weren’t going to get there this semester. Mr. Green And I think that’s okay. In fact, it makes sense because we needed to lay the groundwork before rolling out the new expectations for staff. Ms. Crimson And we took the time to do our research before creating those expectations. Ms. Jackson That’s true. So what did we accomplish? Ms. Montero Well, if you look at the Indicators we selected, you can see that we accomplished both of those. Mr. Winters Hey, that’s true! We now have a set of expectations for our scheduled data meetings. © 2014 Texas Education Agency/The University of Texas Systems 3 Texas State Literacy Plan (TSLP) Online Course – Process Module Lesson 5 Transcript Mr. Green And we assessed the needs and planned professional development for the staff. Ms. Jackson And there are other accomplishments that we didn’t anticipate in our planning. Mr. Winters What do you mean? Ms. Jackson Let’s think about our work this semester. What else did we achieve? Ms. Montero Well, we established a campus-­‐wide focus on data analysis. Mr. Green Yes, the staff has already shown a lot of interest in what we offered for professional development. Mr. Winters Yeah, I’ve had lots of good conversations about data with other teachers. Ms. Crimson And we established connections and relationships as we worked. Ms. Montero Like with the grade level teams we each visited. Mr. Green And with Ms. Franklin, our intervention specialist. Ms. Jackson These relationships form a network for support that we can use in facilitating the implementation of the new data meeting expectations in the fall. Ms. Crimson Also, by visiting grade level data meetings, we learned about other needs as well. Mr. Green Yes, we saw that lots of teachers had questions about how to interpret language proficiency data for their English learners. © 2014 Texas Education Agency/The University of Texas Systems 4 Texas State Literacy Plan (TSLP) Online Course – Process Module Lesson 5 Transcript Ms. Montero And many teachers feel they need more knowledge in how to differentiate instruction. Mr. Winters That’s true. That came up a lot. Mr. Green Yeah, some teachers I met with had heard of differentiating instruction, but they weren’t sure how to apply it in the classroom. Ms. Jackson So let’s make a note of these topics. We’ll want to revisit them when we make our next plan. Narrator The team makes note of what they did, what the results were, and what areas of their plan are still pending. This conversation naturally leads them to step 6, “Determine What You’ll Focus on Next.” The first guide question asks,“Can you now change your implementation rating for the Action Step?” The team turns to their implementation guide for E1 to reflect on this question. Ms. Montero So we know that on the first and last Indicators—the ones we focused on—we have moved from A to B, right? Mr. Winters Yes. But to change our rating on the Action Step, we would have to be at level B for all the Indicators, right? Ms. Crimson Yes, and we had said before that we have work to do on some of the other Indicators. Mr. Green And some of that work can happen apart from our implementation plan. For example, I’ll be working on these two Indicators with Ms. Franklin and intervention specialists from other campuses this summer. © 2014 Texas Education Agency/The University of Texas Systems 5 Texas State Literacy Plan (TSLP) Online Course – Process Module Lesson 5 Transcript Ms. Jackson That’s great! Ms. Montero So we are not ready to change our rating for Action Step E1 just yet, but we are getting close! Mr. Winters Okay, now let’s look at the last part of step 6. What it’s really asking is what are we going to do next. Mr. Green Well, we’ve talked about how we need to continue to work on that first Indicator to facilitate implementation of the expectations in the fall. Ms. Jackson And to move our campus-­‐wide practice toward Level C. Ms. Montero Okay, so we agree that we are not starting something completely new. We want to maintain the focus on effective use of data to improve literacy instruction. Ms. Jackson Yes. And we can select other Indicators that support that goal as well. Mr. Winters So we keep one Indicator and select one new one? Ms. Crimson Yes, that’s one option. Ms. Montero What if we wanted to focus on another Action Step? Mr. Green That’s possible, too. We just need to make sure that whatever else we decide to work on is aligned to our continued focus on data analysis and differentiation. Mr. Winters Yeah, we probably don’t want to divide our attention between very different goals. © 2014 Texas Education Agency/The University of Texas Systems 6 Texas State Literacy Plan (TSLP) Online Course – Process Module Lesson 5 Transcript Ms. Montero There might be Indicators under other Action Steps or even in other components that also focus on using data to differentiate instruction, right? Ms. Crimson That’s right. At the beginning of our planning process last time, we talked about focusing on E2, for example. Mr. Winters And in our visits to data meetings, we saw some needs related to E5. Ms. Montero And some needs around the Standards-­‐based Instruction component, too. Ms. Crimson Yes, we’ll explore all of those options fully in our next meeting. For now, let’s make sure to record our decisions for step 6. Ms. Jackson Okay, so we agreed that we will continue our focus on Action Step E1 and the first Indicator there. And we’ll explore what other Indicators might help support that work. Narrator The ABC Elementary School has completed one cycle of the 6-­‐
step process. In this meeting, they assessed the implementation of their plan and determined their next steps. Now they are ready to take what they have learned and start the cycle again to create a new TSLP Implementation Plan focused on improving reading and writing instruction at their school. © 2014 Texas Education Agency/The University of Texas Systems 7