the middle school quality...

2017 MSQI Literacy Framework

The Middle School Quality Initiative

Executive Director:

Jenna Shumsky

Contributors:

Sheena Hervey

Megan Kennelly

Nicholas Kuroly

Scott Moore

Jenna Shumsky

Adam Weinstock

Daniel R. Wolf

©2017, The Middle School Quality Initiative

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Table of Contents

Introduction

MSQI Framework Overview

MSQI Literacy Learning Community

Executive Summary

The Instructional Core

I. Tiered Literacy Assessment Strategy

II. Effective Literacy Instruction across the Disciplines

III. Strategic Reading Instruction

The Infrastructural Core

I. Leading Literacy Learning

II. Teacher Collaboration

III. Professional Learning

IV. Family and School Partnerships


Introduction The Middle School Quality Initiative (MSQI) supports literacy teaching and learning in middle schools

across New York City’s five boroughs. MSQI partners with schools to provide resources, on-site

coaching, and adult learning opportunities in pursuit of the goal that all students leave middle school

reading, writing, speaking, and thinking independently on grade level.

Five years of effective, close partnerships with middle schools has taught us a great deal about the

learning needs of middle school students, teachers, and school leaders. MSQI recognizes that mid-

dle school students continue to need effective, targeted literacy instruction that is responsive to their

strengths and needs. This is especially true in preparing students for high school and beyond, where

they will tackle an increasingly complex range of texts.

Our goal is to support consistent, comprehensive, and improved literacy practices and leadership both

within and across schools with an adaptable framework that allows for flexibility and innovation

at the school level.

Middle School Quality Initiative Framework

The MSQI Framework builds upon MSQI’s original Five Pillars (Data Screening & Monitoring, Literacy

Across Content Areas, Strategic Reading Tutoring, Teacher Teams, and Continuous Professional

Development) and clarifies and deepens MSQI’s guiding principles. The components of the Framework

comprise our research-based, holistic approach to impacting student literacy, particularly in schools

where the majority of students enter reading significantly below grade level. MSQI has developed these

components through structured research, observation, self-reflection, and analysis over the past five

years of our work.

The following questions guided the development of MSQI’s Framework:

1. What courses of student literacy development in middle school are most likely to lead to academic, personal, and social emotional growth?

2. What do teachers, especially content area teachers in middle schools, need to know about adolescent literacy in order to best support their students?

3. What instructional strategies, classroom resources, curricula, and interventions have been

shown to support students’ ongoing development of literacy skills in middle school?

4. What do school leaders need to know to create a powerful, shared vision for literacy learning in their schools?

5. What strategies have been shown to foster positive family and school partnerships?

While MSQI and our framework focus on literacy learning specifically, we recognize that a school and classroom environment that respect and honor each community member, most critically students, is essential to the learning of all. Affirming adults are particularly key to the sense of safety and motivation that nurture healthy adolescent development, including academic achievement. Without attention to a “holding environment” in which students and adults feel valued, lasting improvement cannot be sustained.

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MSQI Framework Overview

SUCCESSFUL AND STRATEGIC

READERS, WRITERS, AND THINKERS

Effective Literacy Teaching across the Disciplines

Literacy

Leadership

Teacher

Collaboration

Professional Learning Family & School

Partnerships

Tiered Literacy Assessment Strategy

Strategic Reading Instruction


MSQI Literacy Learning Community MSQI is a collaborative community. We support principals, assistant principals, and literacy coaches

in becoming literacy leaders in their schools, and we support teachers in continuously improving their

literacy instructional practices to positively impact students’ reading and writing. We strive to build a

network based on trust and ongoing learning, in which leaders and teachers share best practices and

learn from each other through experiences like inter-school visitations, Japanese lesson study, and

MSQI Roundtables.

This said, MSQI considers itself not an “end all, be all” in terms of literacy but a community that

can support our schools in their pursuit of their overarching literacy vision for their students. MSQI

contributes to a goal far bigger and more important than our program itself, the goal that all New York

City middle school students will graduate eighth grade reading on grade level and therefore prepared

for success in high school and beyond. Graduating middle school reading on grade level can have a

truly life-changing impact on our students – particularly those negatively affected on the basis of

geographic region, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.

Research has shown how critical middle school years are in terms of students’ literacy, mindsets,

and relationship with academics; indeed, from a teaching standpoint middle school is an opportunity

to significantly empower students as readers, writers, thinkers, and global citizens. MSQI humbly but

passionately aims to link arms with our schools and support this broader pursuit for our students,

providing whatever supports and resources each of our individual schools need, which shifts as

schools build the capacity to lead this work and transform students’ literacy on their own. The MSQI

team collaborates with each school to tailor our support to address their needs.

The supports and opportunities MSQI provides to our schools come in many forms, and they include:

Professional Development Workshops MSQI supports schools over the summer and throughout the year. The MSQI team facilitates a range

of workshops that provide an introduction to different components of MSQI, as well as supporting

the ongoing professional learning needs of teachers and leadership teams already engaged in the

work. These are tailored to give the necessary grounding to begin, or support to continue the work in

schools.

In-school Coaching A coach is assigned to provide specific support to the school. The professional learning is tailored to

meet the school’s needs and is embedded in teachers’ daily practice. The coaching is differentiated to

meet teachers’ needs and includes: class visitations and support, demonstration lessons, co-planning

and facilitation of team meetings, lab-site development and partnership with school leaders.

Teaching Fellows The MSQI Teaching Fellows program brings together a cohort of teacher leaders from across MSQI

schools in a yearlong cycle of work. This work leverages a cross-school lesson study strategy, whereby

teachers work collaboratively to plan, teach, observe and debrief several “study lessons” during inter-

visitations at each other’s schools.

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School Inter-visitations Being a member of a professional learning community is an important aspect of the work. MSQI

supports and organizes visits to a number of schools that highlight what different components of MSQI

can look like in practice. Teachers and leadership have the opportunity to learn from others and share

promising practices.

Roundtables MSQI Roundtables is a yearly culminating event that celebrates the extraordinary and innovative

work of the teachers and leaders in our schools and offers a platform for collaboration across the

MSQI community. Participants have the opportunity to attend teacher-facilitated presentations of

their choosing with the goal of using their new learnings to plan strategic next steps for

literacy in their schools.

Partnerships MSQI has a number of strategic partnerships that strengthen the work and provide opportunities

for students to engage in a wider range of experiences. These include: debate with the NYC Urban

Debate League; spoken word/poetry with Urban Word NYC, and Science Fair with the Strategic

Education Research Partnership (SERP). We also support programs that assist schools in meeting

specific learning needs or audiences, such as: Wilson’s Wilson Reading System and Just Words

programs for phonemic awareness and decoding; Strategic Adolescent Reading Intervention (STARI),

through SERP, to address development of fluency and comprehension within a rich text-based

program; WestEd’s Academic Parent Teacher Teams to engage and support parents with developing

literacy and reading comprehension at home, and the Parent/ Teacher Home Visit Project to establish

a trustful relationship between home and school.

MSQI Website MSQI maintains a website that provides materials, tools and other supports for all components of the

Initiative - and continues to add more resources each year. In particular, the team has developed, and

continues to develop, a collection of videos that showcase the practices that schools have adopted

through MSQI to support the professional learning and implementation of different strategies and

approaches across the MSQI community.

MSQI Coordinator Meetings Three times a year, MSQI provides the opportunity for MSQI leadership in schools to meet and

converse with each other in order to share the practices that are addressing their literacy needs, as

well as develop literacy leadership practices that can guide and develop the work with all key

stakeholders in schools.


Middle School Quality Initiative

Comprehensive, Research-‐Based Literacy Framework

INSTRUCTION


Comprehensive, Research-Based Literacy

Framework (Continued) ≥

TIE

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LIT

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ASSESSM

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EFFEC

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TEA

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AC

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DIS

CIP

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Universal Screening Secondary Diagnostics Formative Assessment

Deliberate Teaching Strategy Instruction

Schools use a universal screener to identify patterns and trends in reading needs and track student reading growth over the course of middle school.

Schools administer secondary diagnostics to select students to diagnose specific reading needs.

Students are assessed regularly during Tier 1 instruction.

Teachers regularly and explicitly demonstrate the ways proficient readers make meaning from texts and the ways proficient writers construct text.

Teachers increase the volume and range of texts students encounter and support them in their engagement, using strategies that have been explicitly taught and metacognitive reflection to assess learning and thinking through reading, writing and discussion.

Schools provide intensive, targeted reading instruction to students of all reading levels in homogeneous groups, taking into consideration different starting points of students, their literacy strengths and needs, and what lessons, activities and programs will ensure that all students grow.

Intervention & Acceleration

Flexible Programming

Time for literacy intervention & acceleration is embedded into the school day for all students, ensures intervention programs are delivered as designed (typically five days/week for 45 minutes a day), and allows for students to move flexibly between classes/programs as assessment results are evaluated by teachers and leaders.

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INFRASTRUCTURE

Literacy Vision

and Goals

To lead change in

schools, literacy

leaders develop

a shared literacy

vision and annual

goals and maintain

a clear focus on the

vision and goals

throughout the

school year.

Distributive

Literacy

Leadership

Literacy leaders

work with a literacy

team to model

literacy practices

and execute the

school’s literacy

vision and goals.

Resources and

Programming

Literacy leaders

strategically align

fiscal resources

in support of their

literacy vision and

annual goals.

Modeling

and On-Going

Reflection

Literacy leaders

engage in reflective

practices about

their schools’

literacy visions

and goals with

fellow leaders and

thought partners.

They seek to ensure

that teaching

and learning

are informed by

evaluation processes

that rely upon real-

time data.

Strategies for Teacher Collaboration

Teacher teams engage in cycles of learning

in which instructional decisions are made

through careful analysis of student level data

and/or low-inference observation. Some

strategies for teacher collaboration include

but are not limited to: looking at student

work, inquiry, lesson study, lab-sites,

inter-visitations, and demo sites

Scheduled Time for Teams to Meet

School programming allows for structured,

regularly scheduled time to meet within the

school day, across a work week. Successful

teams have clear distributive leadership

structures (such as teacher leaders) and

routines for meeting time.


Comprehensive, Research-Based Literacy

Framework (Continued) ≥

TE

AC

HER

C

OLLAB

OR

ATIO

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LIT

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AC

Y L

EA

DERSH

IP




INFRASTRUCTURE

Embedding Literacy

within the School Context

Literacy leaders provide

time, resources and support

for professional learning

connected to the school’s

literacy vision and goals.

Effective leaders develop a

cohesive, comprehensive

plan for adult learning.

Fostering Collaboration

Literacy leaders develop

professional learning plans

that foster collaboration and

shared responsibility for

student achievement and

literacy.

Differentiation

Adults have diverse

learning needs, and

professional learning must

be differentiated to address

those varying

Building Relationships

Teacher teams engage in cycles of learning

Families play an integral part in improving

academic achievement and should be

viewed as partners in students’ literacy

development. In order to build positive and

constructive relationships with families,

schools create open and welcoming

environments where all families feel valued.

Linking Partnerships to Learning

Schools share literacy data with families and

support them in interpreting the information.

They help families better understand what

skills are critical to literacy success, how

their child is progressing, and how families

can best support their children. Schools

provide families with strategies, activities

and resources that can be used at home to

enrich their children’s learning

FAM

ILY A

ND

SC

HO

OL

PAR

TN

ERSH

IPS

PR

OFESSIO

NA

L L

EARN

ING

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Executive Summary

The Instructional Core: Successful Readers, Writers, and Thinkers Students are at the heart of MSQI. Our mission is, through our collaboration with schools, to empower

all students to leave middle school reading, writing, speaking, and thinking independently on grade

level. To achieve this goal, we know students must see purpose and experience joy in reading and

writing, and to be able to flexibly apply a range of strategies to help them engage with the increasingly

complex texts and tasks they encounter as they progress to high school and beyond.

The Instructional Core MSQI believes that effective instruction, impactful teachers, and ongoing teacher learning are critical

levers in increasing student literacy growth. The instructional core of the MSQI Framework, therefore,

addresses literacy teaching and learning – with specific emphasis on a tiered literacy assessment strategy,

effective literacy teaching across all disciplines, and strategic reading instruction.

The most impactful support for reading achievement in middle schools is effective Tier One teaching

across all content areas. Embedding literacy instruction across all subjects fosters collective

ownership of student literacy across the school community and exposes students to content-specific

literacy practices. These practices are essential in teaching middle school students to engage with

content area concepts and key ideas.

Tiered Assessment Strategy: MSQI uses a universal screener, the Degrees of Reading Power (DRP), to help schools identify patterns and trends in reading needs, and secondary diagnostics for students who we need more data on to properly diagnose reading needs. MSQI guides schools to use this information to make strategic planning decisions at the individual student, class, and school levels. Ongoing assessment for learning, including teacher observations, teacher conferences with students, and standards-aligned rubrics and checklists, are used to monitor progress and student metacognition and adjust programs and instruction to meet students’ needs.

Effective Literacy Teaching Across the Disciplines: Meeting the needs of all middle school learners, especially those most underserved by public

education systems, requires the deliberate teaching of high-leverage literacy strategies. Effective

teachers regularly and explicitly demonstrate the ways proficient readers make meaning from texts

and the ways proficient writers construct texts. Deliberate teaching, coupled with metacognitive

reflection, moves students towards independence, scaffolding their learning and gradually releasing

responsibility to students as they master comprehension strategies, discussion strategies, ways to

use text structures and features, writing strategies, and academic vocabulary.

One of the most significant ways teachers can positively impact middle school students’ literacy

learning is to increase the volume and range of texts students read. We must support students in

deepening their engagement, using the strategies that we have explicitly taught, and meta-

cognitively reflecting on how, why, and when they use them.


High-quality, authentic thinking and discussions about texts across disciplines improves students’

reading comprehension and writing skills. Extended discussions about a text can be facilitated by the

teacher or can occur as structured, student-led discussions in collaborative learning groups.

As with reading, it is critical to expose students to a large volume and wide range of meaningful

experiences with writing. Students need instruction that explicitly teaches strategies for planning,

revising, crafting, and editing text. When students are active collaborators in the writing and learning

processes, they build the ability to apply writing strategies independently.

Strategic Instruction: Students come into our classrooms with different strengths and needs. It is our responsibility to

ensure that every single student experiences literacy success as well as a “productive struggle”

through which they can grow. Through strategic instruction, MSQI supports schools in targeting the

diverse range of literacy learning needs through a multifaceted approach. Strategic instruction involves

providing intensive, targeted reading instruction to students of all reading levels in homogeneous

groups. It takes into consideration the different starting points of students, their literacy strengths and

needs, and what lessons and activities will ensure that all students grow.

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School-Wide Practices to Support the Instructional Core To leverage our focus on teaching and learning, MSQI supports schools in implementing school-wide

practices that will support the instructional core of our Framework. Such school-wide practices include

literacy leadership, teacher collaboration, professional learning, and school-family partnerships

LITERACY

LEADERSHIP

TEACHER

COLLABORATION

PROFESSIONAL

LEARNING

FAMILY & SCHOOL

PARTNERSHIPS

Effective leaders maintain and communicate a clear vision about

literacy in their school that places student development at the

center and fosters a community that shares responsibility for

that vision. Literacy leaders create a climate of high expectations,

professional behavior, and accountability.

Effective teachers learn together and share expertise in professional

learning teams that extend across grades, subject areas, and

schools. Teachers enhance their understanding of students as

individuals, their strengths and vision for growth, and how teachers

can best support students’ progress along the developmental

continuum. MSQI supports teacher collaboration in teams that

analyze data and student work to identify best literacy practices,

implement new strategies, and reflect on the process through a

cycle of inquiry.

The effectiveness of adult learning within a school typically reflects

and directly impacts the quality of student learning at the school.

MSQI supports schools in developing and implementing a vision

for meaningful adult learning. Teachers and leaders need time,

opportunities to collaborate, and targeted support with new

strategies; MSQI supports ongoing professional learning through

embedded coaching, workshops, professional learning teams,

school-based demonstration sites, showcase visits, and special

programs that meet individual school needs.

Powerful student learning is not confined to the walls of the school

building. Schools must partner meaningfully with parents, families,

and caregivers to support students’ literacy growth in school and

beyond. To maximize students’ literacy growth, teachers and school

leaders foster supportive and positive school-home relationships

focused on the development of students as readers,

writers, and thinkers.


The Instructional Core

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I. Tiered Literacy Assessment Strategy

“Different types of assessments - formative, interim, and summative - can be leveraged in such a way

that learning moves forward. To do so, assessment must be an integral part of the classroom, both for

students and for the teacher. In fact, if students are not cognizant of the role that assessment plays in

their learning lives, its effectiveness is diminished and only grading is left.”

- Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey, Assessments that Highlight Strengths and Challenges

“If doctors performed surgery without examining their patients first they’d be tried for malpractice.

Why should it be considered any less scandalous for teachers to provide instruction without first

assessing kids’ knowledge and skills?”

- Rafael Heller, Ph.D, Make it a Priority to Assess Students’ Literacy Skills

The belief that every student can improve drives all meaningful assessment. Administrators, teachers,

and students must have a shared understanding of literacy learning as a continuum. Everyone in

a school should identify student progress along that literacy learning continuum using common

descriptive indicators, and these indicators should align with formative and summative assessments.

In order to ensure this alignment, we must first ensure that our middle school assessment data

provides extensive information about students’ reading. To this end, performance-based assessment

tasks must make students’ thinking visible to both teacher and student.

Since adolescent students are more likely to become independent learners when they develop the

ability to monitor their own work and growth, assessments should also foster student ownership

over their own learning. To do this well, assessments should comprise text-based tasks that help

all students and teachers understand what high-quality work looks like (through examining models

of quality work), the criteria that defines quality work (through comprehensive rubrics), and how to

compare and evaluate their work against the criteria.

Each assessment we administer has its own inherent value and limitations, and

illustrates what a student can do and what their needs are at one particular point in time

or on one particular task. For these reasons and more, no single source of information

can accurately or fully summarize a student’s achievement, growth, or understanding.

Therefore, MSQI advocates for schools

and teachers to use a range of tiered,

strategically-administered assessments

to get to know each of our students

as individual readers. Through use

of the Degrees of Reading Power

(DRP) screener, secondary reading

diagnostics, rubrics, and targeted teacher


conferencing and observation, we are most

likely to gain a comprehensive picture of

each student’s unique reading process,

literacy-related growth, and areas

requiring further attention.

Elements of MSQI’s Tiered Assessment Strategy

1. The Degrees of Reading Power (DRP) is administered to screen all students. The DRP is a

summative criterion-based, reading comprehension assessment that is nationally

normed. It allows us to place students in buckets by general reading level and to identify

patterns in classes and across a school, which in turn helps us to make informed decisions

about areas of need to target.

2. Secondary reading diagnostics for students struggling the most with reading

comprehension help us to gain a more in- depth understanding of their specific reading

needs. Secondary diagnostics must be administered for students who score below 45

on the DRP.

3. Ongoing assessment of student reading and writing in every classroom, through teacher

observations and the use of rubrics and checklists to monitor progress occur regularly throughout the school year.

Ongoing Formative Assessments Assessments should be designed to measure progress as well as strengths and areas for growth.

Tasks should address a number of standards, each of which should be assessed over a range of

tasks. Formative reading assessment should include the use of rubrics to monitor students’ use of

comprehension strategies, their contributions to authentic text-based discussions, and their writing

about texts.

MSQI supports schools in strengthening their assessment cycles. Assessment for the purpose

of improving student learning is an ongoing process; teachers and students continuously use the

assessment process as both a method to monitor progress as well as an opportunity to adjust targets

or instruction to ensure growth (William 2008). For example:

1. A teacher explicitly shares feedback on a formative assessment with a student to help set

the student’s course for learning.

2. Then, the teacher and student together establish individual student goals and targets based

on the teacher’s feedback and student self-reflection.

3. The teacher plans lessons and activities that address the learning target of that individual

student or groups of students (small or whole class) that have a similar learning need.

4. The teacher establishes points throughout the lesson or unit to monitor student

understanding and gauge student growth through formative assessment.

This assessment cycle is enhanced through teacher collaboration. One of the goals of MSQI is to

encourage schools to see that formative assessment is collaborative. We aim to engage teacher teams

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and students in developing a collaborative understanding of both a student’s current reading and

writing skills and where the student needs to grow.


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Key Underpinnings of

Literacy Assessment

• The belief that every student can improve drives all

meaningful assessment.

• No single source of information can fully summarize

a student’s achievement, growth, or understanding.

Effective teachers analyze rich sources of information to

determine what a student can do and what their needs are

at a particular point in time. They use a variety of sources,

including the DRP, rubrics, and secondary diagnostic to

make decisions about student learning.

• Literacy leaders, teachers and students develop a shared

understanding of literacy learning as a continuum, with

aligned descriptive indicators.

• Teachers establish clear goals and targets and plan lessons

and activities that address whole group, small group, and

individual learning needs. Teachers monitor understanding\

and growth within tasks, lessons, and units to gauge growth

and, if needed, to revise instruction.

• Feedback for learning is explicit and timely. Both teachers

and students use feedback to set the course for continuous

learning.

Tiered Literacy Assessment Strategy

Universal Screener

• Administering a universal reading screener with fidelity

• Sharing data across content areas using protocols

• Goal setting with students

Secondary Diagnostics

• Assessing students more thoroughly

• Identifying specific areas of need and matching support to individual students

Assessment for Learning

• Drawing interferences about student literacy learning based

on student work (reading, writing and discussion)

• Providing targeted, actionable feedback to students

• Differentiating instruction for students based on need

• Goal setting with students


Literacy Assessment Snapshot 1:

Student Goal Setting

Collecting Data Mr. Carlin, the ELA teacher, uses multiple sources to assess the reading strengths and needs of an

8th grade student, Juan. At the start of the school year, all students complete the Degree of Reading

Power (DRP) assessment. The teacher uses the score on Juan’s Fall DRP, responses from his reading

journal and notes on Juan’s contributions in small group discussions to develop an understanding of

Juan’s individual learning needs.

Goal Setting Conversation Mr. Carlin meets with Juan to set goals and targets for learning. During the conversation, Mr. Carlin

notes Juan’s strengths and areas for growth in terms of reading. After the conversation, Juan writes

down his goals and strategies to reach them. A timeframe is set for the next check in so that both

teacher and student can monitor progress in meeting the goal.

Literacy Assessment Snapshot 2:

Analyzing Student Work

Collaborative Discussion The social studies team at Middle School 444 meets at the beginning of the unit to discuss and

analyze a pre-assessment writing sample. Each teacher brings in a few samples of student written

work, and together the team uses a protocol for looking at student work. Their talk as a team

focuses on analyzing and discussing in particular how text-based evidence is used to explain different

perspectives about a major historical event.

Identifying Patterns and Trends The social studies team uses a grade level rubric for argument writing to assess student work. After

analyzing the work against the rubric, the team identifies a pattern; they determine that most students

are able to include specific evidence, but students frequently do not explain how the evidence impacts

individual perspective. Used as a formative assessment, the pre-writing sample provides teacher

teams with clear direction for responding to the data.

Using Data to Inform Instruction the teacher models how to explain a perspective using evidence. Together, the team discusses how

they will model the skill for students. Teachers plan to use the strategy of Interactive Writing along

with a Think Aloud strategy to demonstrate the skill for their students and then have students practice.


Literacy Assessment Snapshot

3: Using Secondary Diagnostics

to Improve Student Learning

Outcomes

Collecting Data After the administration of the DRP, at Middle School 444, students who score 45 or below are

administered secondary diagnostics. Three teachers in grade 6 are trained to administer a Running

Record, Wilson’s WIST (Word Identification and Spelling Test), and Wilson’s TOSWRF (Test of Silent

Word Reading Fluency, aka “The Slasher”) assessments. Working as a team, these teachers

administer and analyze the student data, noting strengths, needs, and next steps for individual

students in the areas of decoding, fluency, and comprehension. As a next step, the team shares the

assessment data with all grade level teachers at the next team meeting.

Knowing Students During the team meeting, Ms. Chang reviews her class data. Based on the cut point breakdown, Ms.

Chang identifies that many students in her science class are reading below grade level. The whole

team discusses how to support these students. They share strategies and decide collectively that these

students would benefit from small group instruction, leveled texts, and the opportunity to read aloud

with a partner to support their comprehension of and responses to text.

Using the Data Data informs many of Ms. Chang’s decisions. She uses information about DRP levels as well as

secondary diagnostics to group her students homogeneously, as well as heterogeneously, based on

the task. When planning targeted instruction, she identifies the skills that students need to complete

the task. During a lesson using a complex science text, she models the skill of annotating. While

the students read in small groups, she circulates, observing their annotations, naming aloud what

students are doing well, and offering guidance as needed..

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References Absolum, M. (2006). Clarity in the Classroom. Auckland: Hodder.

Black, P. J., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education:

Principles, Policy and Practice, 5 (1), 7–74.

Clarke, S. (2001). Unlocking formative assessment: Practical strategies for enhancing pupils’ learning

in the primary classroom. London: Hodder and Stoughton.

Clarke, S., Timperley, H., & Hattie, J. (2003). Unlocking formative assessment: Practical strategies for

enhancing pupils’ learning in the primary and intermediate classroom (New Zealand ed.). Auckland:

Hodder Moa Beckett.

Harlen, W. (2006) On the Relationship between Assessment for Formative and Summative Purposes. In

J. Gardner (Ed), Assessment and Learning (p. 104). London: Sage Publications Ltd.

Popham, W.J. (2008). Transformative Assessment (p.7). Virginia, USA: ASCD.

Sadler, R. (1989). Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems. Instructional

Science, 18, 119–44.

Short, D. J. & Fitzsimmons, S. (2006). Double the work: Challenges and solutions to acquiring

language and academic literacy for adolescent English language learners. A report to the Carnegie

Corporation of New York. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education.

Wiliams, D (2008, August). When is assessment learning-oriented? A presentation delivered at 4th

Biennial EARLI/Northumbria Assessment Conference, Potsdam, Germany


“

II. Effective Literacy Teaching across Disciplines

Of all subject areas, literacy stands alone as one of the most

effective vehicles for school change, in that success in literacy

ensures success in other curriculum areas. That is, if students can

read, write, and talk effectively, they can participate more fully in

other areas of learning.”- David Booth & Jennifer Roswell

Every child can learn to read and write, given time and effective instructional support. MSQI helps

administrators and teachers develop a common, research-based understanding of what “effective

instructional support” looks like and how to implement it school-wide. Middle school students,

particularly those that have yet to achieve grade level standards, need a combination of

simultaneous supports to develop the skills necessary to comprehend complex, grade-level texts

and to build confidence and persistence. These supports can combat the negative associations with

reading (e.g. inadequacy, humiliation) that far too many of our students harbor. To succeed in high

school and beyond, students must leave middle school with a sense of joy and a sense of purpose

connected to reading. Teachers must foster that joy and purpose in students while also addressing

skills gaps, which can seem a daunting responsibility without the proper support and tools,

especially for the many middle school teachers who have not received formal training in how to

teach reading.

Reading is not walking on the words; it’s grasping the soul of

them.” - Paulo Freire

Meeting the needs of all middle school learners requires deliberate, effective teaching of high-

leverage literacy strategies. Deliberate teaching entails knowing our students as individuals and

identifying the specific teaching practices that will have the greatest impact on their literacy growth.

Supporting students’ reading, writing, speaking, and listening is the shared responsibility of teachers

across all disciplines. While teachers in ELA often introduce and explicitly teach comprehension

strategies, these must be reinforced authentically in each content area. Additionally, Students need to

be shown how to read the texts specific to each discipline through the deliberate teaching of

comprehension strategies, discussion strategies, text structure and features, academic

vocabulary, and writing in each subject. In order to support students in reading discipline-specific

texts, every teacher must understand what makes our texts complex.

Teaching Comprehension Strategies

Teachers must explicitly teach and model comprehension strategies and then provide students with

opportunities to practice these strategies in authentic contexts and with a variety of texts, including

some chosen by students themselves. This process is particularly important in supporting middle

39

school students reading below grade level. Our deliberate teaching of comprehension strategies must

take into account that effective readers and writers use a range of strategies simultaneously, in a

variety of combinations, when interacting with text. When we consider proficient, adult readers like

ourselves, we do not use strategies in isolation but are constantly using strategies such as rereading,

using context clues, predicting, clarifying, visualizing, connecting, questioning, and summarizing as

we read a newspaper article or novel; but through ongoing practice, we have internalized such

strategies and may not consciously think about them as we use them. This is not the case for many of

our middle school readers – yet.

In order to support this eventual internalization in our students, we must first explicitly teach and

model these strategies and support student metacognition, their awareness of how they are thinking

and using strategies before, during and after engaging with text.

Effective teachers know that in order to move students’ literacy, we cannot simply assign and assess

work – we must show students how to use specific strategies effectively and build their understanding

of the benefits of using these strategies. Six main comprehension strategies that must be taught are

• Predicting

• Questioning

• Using text structures and features

• Thinking aloud

• Visualizing

• Summarizing

These strategies can be introduced in the most supportive context, with a teacher reading aloud to

students and then engaging in a shared close reading (during which students have the text in front

of them and therefore are able to share in the close reading). This enables students to focus fully on

the reading strategy as it is first introduced without being distracted by reading or fluency challenges

that can sometimes preoccupy them. Middle school students need purposeful and explicit reading

instruction in order to successfully read and understand a range of text forms and to complete complex

tasks for a range of purposes.

We must also deliberately provide guided practice time for students to receive support in practicing

what they have learned. Guided practice time is important for the gradual release of responsibility

to students, and it also creates opportunities for targeted mini-lessons and conferences focused on

specific strategies and skills with specific students.

Last but certainly not least, we must deliberately provide monitored independent student practice

time for them to apply these strategies and to reflect meta-cognitively. Independent practice is

critical to build student ownership and metacognition – especially when teachers deliberately

incorporate student self-reflection on the strategies and skills they use.

The gradual release approach we advocate for, from modeling to guiding to independence, may

occur throughout one class period; however, the time devoted to each practice may also be spread

out over time based on individual and whole group needs.


Teaching Discussion Strategies Purposeful discussion about a wide range of texts is not merely an end in and of itself for students; it

extends students’ knowledge of themselves and the world, builds critical background knowledge and

connections, and offers insights that deepen students’ reading comprehension and written work.

An international research study, the Five Nations Study, conducted in classrooms in five countries,

demonstrates the powerful learning effects of skillfully using classroom discussion. In this approach,

both teachers and students make extended and significant contributions to learning and discussion

in the classroom (Mercer & Littleton, 2007). This extended student contribution is critical to student

literacy learning.

Research also reveals some of the less effective but deeply-ingrained teacher habits that often play

out in our classrooms. The average teacher poses over 60,000 questions and provides 30,000 pieces

of corrective feedback in response to students’ replies every year (Ellis, McCartney, & Bourne 2011).

As early as 1910, research showed a predictable pattern present in almost all classrooms, across

all grades and subjects: teachers ask a question, call on one or two volunteer students to answer,

and then comment on the offered responses. While the Teacher-Student-Teacher (T-S-T) trend is

somewhat less common now, it is still used in many classrooms today – but this T-S-T pattern does

not promote effective student discussion.

MSQI promotes extended discussions that are designed to help students’ deepen their understanding

of a text. These discussions can occur in the context of a whole class, small groups, or pairs, where

students explore ideas and practice thinking through and expressing concepts. Over the course of a

school year, students take increasing ownership over these increasingly extended discussions, during

which students practice strategies of reasoning, inquiry, and negotiation that were explicitly modeled

by the teacher during a mini-lesson.

Open-ended questioning and discussion encourage students to think more deeply about ideas and

information than the “traditional” teacher-student-teacher pattern does. Therefore, MSQI encourages

teachers to move towards fostering “dialogic” classrooms where students generate the bulk of the

questions central to authentic discussion. In these classrooms, the emphasis is not on students

providing correct answers because there is no singular “right” answer; instead, the focus is on

students providing rationales for their authentic analyses of and claims about text.

41

Teaching Text Structures and Features

In considering ourselves as adult readers, we can recognize the importance of being comfortable

with a wide range of texts. We know that as proficient readers, we understand the organizational

patterns used to present ideas and information in a text and use those to support our comprehension.

Within the first few lines of a text, we can often determine the genre of the text and how we will

approach navigating it based on what we know about that genre.

This combination of skills can be challenging for middle school students, both as readers and writers.

The challenge is compounded as the complexity and volume of discipline-specific texts adolescents

encounter increases as they get older (Carnegie, 2010).

But texts become much easier to understand when students can recognize their structural form. In

order to do so, middle school students need explicit instruction about text structures and exposure

to a wide array of texts that will become familiar and recognizable to them. This helps them predict

what to expect from a text, determine the most important elements, make meaning of the information

presented, and summarize information (Duke et al, 2011).

To succeed in high school and beyond, students must be able to identify the features of each text type

and predict how to read more effectively (Duke & Pearson 2002). Students can then apply the same

patterns of text structures to organize their thinking and writing.

Teaching Academic Vocabulary

In middle school, students increasingly encounter academic vocabulary in print that is not part of

everyday spoken language. Some of this academic vocabulary, referred to as Tier 3 by Isabel Beck, is content-specific (e.g. photosynthesis, sarcophagus, numerator) and conveys a significant share of text meaning and discipline-related concepts. Learning these specialized vocabularies in each content area class through explicit vocabulary instruction has proven to contribute to adolescents’ overall reading success. Tier 3 terms are typically the easiest for students to learn and retain because they are so unique, and they often have only one fairly specific definition.

More challenging to middle school students are Tier 2 academic vocabulary words whose meaning

shifts depending on context (e.g. analyze, function, structure). These words are often found across

multiple disciplines. Students recognize these terms easily because they see them all the time, yet

when questioned as to their meaning, they typically struggle to explain what they mean or how they

change across contexts. Dictionary definition for these types of words are also difficult to

understand because there are usually several different definitions offered, which can often be vague

or non-descript. Teachers must explicitly teach academic vocabulary in a dynamic way that exposes

our students to the nuances of meaning in different contexts and encourages students to attempt to

use these words as much as possible. This encouragement helps to build confidence, ownership, and

positive, non-threatening associations with academic English. MSQI supports schools in implementing

Word Generation to integrate the explicit teaching of this type of vocabulary across disciplines, which

research has proven enhances students’ ability to acquire academic vocabulary and furthers the ability

to comprehend texts.


Teaching Writing Strategies Writing is also an integral part of learning for adolescents. Research shows that writing about content

material helps students understand and remember it better. Furthermore, teaching writing skills can

improve reading fluency and comprehension (Graham & Hebert, 2010).

There is no one approach that will successfully teach all students to write well. At MSQI we advocate

for deliberate teaching of a range of writing strategies that encompass the steps necessary for

planning, drafting, revising, and/or editing different kinds of text.

Students need frequent opportunities to practice using these strategies for varied and authentic

purposes across disciplines. By authentic, we mean creating tasks that connect with students’

experiences and allow for student choice, providing adequate time for writing projects, and evaluating

with multiple measures that consider audience and purpose.

In order to continue to grow as writers, students need frequent opportunities to write. Schools have the

responsibility to provide extended writing time in all classrooms. Increasing the time students spend

writing is not the sole responsibility of ELA teachers. Teachers across the disciplines should include

daily opportunities for writing. Writing regularly for different purposes will help students develop as

writers while supporting their learning across disciplines.

Students need experiences that teach them how to write for varied purposes and audiences. Across

their classes, students should have meaningful opportunities to write in order to communicate with

others, to explore ideas, to inform, to persuade, to entertain, and to reflect.

Writing can be used as a means to help students explore new ideas, process information, and better

understand content material across all disciplines. Writing-to-learn has been found to be equally

effective for all content areas (Graham & Perin, 2007) and usually takes the form of brief, informal

writing exercises, such as learning logs, response journals, and quickwrites, which help students

reflect on their content learning. Writing-to-learn on a regular basis can help students practice writing

skills, such as organizing information, justifying claims, and explaining a process.

There is an added benefit when students spend time writing about texts in their classes: writing

about reading enhances and improves comprehension. When used purposefully, “writing about

a text provides students with a tool for visibly and permanently recording, connecting, analyzing,

personalizing, and manipulating key ideas in text” (Graham & Hebert, 2010) . Effective writing about

reading tasks include writing personal responses, writing summaries, taking notes, and generating

and answering questions about a text. This type of writing can be particularly effective when used as

preparation for a text-based discussion since it provides time to process information before speaking.

Writing could also be used after a text-based discussion as a way for students to synthesize and

memorialize ideas.

43

Teachers also need to provide time in class for more extensive writing pieces on a single topic where

students can apply their understanding of content knowledge. These tasks may include argument

essays, research reports, and discipline-specific genres, such as science lab reports or mathematical

proofs.

Students need to be taught the specific features of writing in various disciplines and explicitly shown

how to write like aspiring scientists, mathematicians, historians, and literary critics. Students can

build their knowledge of a genre by analyzing disciplinary texts for important features such as

structure and language and then apply these to their own writing.

Disciplinary Literacy in All Content Areas Disciplinary literacy is a term that refers to “the use of reading, reasoning, investigating, speaking, and

writing required to learn and form complex content knowledge appropriate to a particular discipline”

(McConachie & Petrosky, 2010, p. 16). The goal of disciplinary literacy is for students to learn not only

the essential content of a discipline but also how reading and writing are specifically used in that field.

Texts are unique in each discipline. As stated previously, it is critical for all teachers to explicitly teach

students how the text structures in their field are shaped by and shape the content of texts. The way

texts are read also differs across the content areas, which makes it even more important for teachers

of each content area to engage students with complex texts specific to that subject. Adolescents are

more likely to succeed when teachers explicitly model reading and writing strategies for their

discipline and encourage the application of reading comprehension strategies across disciplines.

When teachers are clear about the reading and writing demands of their discipline, they can

deliberately integrate the teaching of literacy with the teaching of disciplinary content in appropriate,

cohesive ways. A consistent focus on reading and text-based talk during class time across all

disciplines builds the reasoning and problem-solving skills students need to navigate the increased

text complexity of middle school.

Increasing the Volume and Range of Text According to data gathered from New York City middle schools, students read much less than the

recommended 120 minutes per day (and the daily four hours of meaningful interaction with text that

Reading Next suggests for adequate yearly progress). In many MSQI schools we have found that

students read 20-30 minutes per day across all subjects. Students are often engaging with text by

listening to a teacher read and not reading independently. MSQI is committed to increasing

meaningful, independent student time on text across disciplines.

Middle school readers, particularly reluctant or dependent readers, tend to engage with text if they

have a clear sense of purpose in reading the text. Engaging with a wide range of texts and text forms,

including some of students’ own choosing, can help students see text all around them and to recognize

the many ways in which they utilize their literacy skills every day. Sustained experiences with diverse

texts from a variety of genres can help students explore various perspectives and can also enhance

motivation, especially if these diverse texts include elements of authentic student choice.


Fostering Discussion and Metacognition

In pursuing the goal of building students’ reading independence, all teachers must encourage students

to approach reading as a purposeful, active process of employing strategies to make meaning rather

than a passive absorption of meaning. To build this repertoire of text-based, problem-solving strategies

and stamina while reading, students also must build a metacognitive understanding of the reading

strategies that they employ as they read.

Metacognition fosters the ability to self-monitor as we read. For instance, metacognition helps

readers recognize when they have lost comprehension of a passage, so they can strategically reread.

Metacognition must be modeled explicitly, such as through read-alouds coupled with think-alouds. For

instance, the teacher can read aloud a shared passage with students and model what it looks like to

recognize a tricky passage and reread it. Then, the teacher can shift the responsibility to students to

reread that passage independently, with less support.

Teachers must help students develop a shared language for talking about comprehension and for

making student thinking visible. To deepen both comprehension and metacognition, students need

opportunities to discuss the text and the strategies that they are using as they read with their peers.

Students need regular experiences working in small groups to analyze and question texts, and ongoing

discussions in which to consider and reconsider what texts mean and how they know what they mean.

MSQI recommends reciprocal teaching as one way teachers of all disciplines can teach reading

strategies, support discussion, and foster student metacognition. In reciprocal teaching, the teacher

explicitly teaches and models the use of four comprehension strategies: predicting, clarifying,

questioning, and summarizing. Students then apply these strategies to a text through discussion

in a small group. The teacher supports the group and gradually decreases the amount of guidance

offered. Eventually, through practice and peer interaction, students acquire the ability to apply reading

strategies and discuss the text and their thinking about the text on their own.

45


Key Underpinnings for Effective Literacy Teaching across Disciplines

• Every child can learn to read and write with time and effective

instructional support.

• Supporting students’ literacy is the shared responsibility of

teachers across all disciplines.

• Middle school students need purposeful and explicit reading and vocabulary

instruction to successfully read and understand a wide range of texts.

• Six main comprehension strategies that must be taught are predicting,

questioning, using text structures and features, thinking aloud, visualizing,

and summarizing.

• Student talk is essential for students’ literacy learning.

• Independent readers and writers use a range of strategies when interacting

with text. They do not use strategies in isolation.

• Effective teachers demonstrate how to apply a range of strategies through

modeling, guiding and supporting students as they practice and by monitoring

independent student achievement Middle school students need deliberate

teaching that provides mini-lessons on specific strategies and skills and involves

students in applying what they learn.

• Effective teachers explicitly model the kind of talk about text that facilitates

learning in whole class, small-group, and one- on-one situations.

• Literacy instruction must be embedded across all subjects, including explicit

modeling of reading and writing strategies in that discipline.

• Engagement with a wide range of text forms can help students see the

texts all around them and recognize the many ways in which they read

every day. Sustained

experiences with diverse texts, from a variety of genres, build

perspective and enhance motivation.

• Middle school students need high-quality texts of appropriate complexity and

variety, and many opportunities to read and talk about their reading.

• Students need to develop a language for talking about comprehension to build

metacognition. Students and teachers need a shared language to talk about the

types of thinking associated with classroom tasks and about literacy strategies

and thinking strategies.

• Adolescents are less likely to struggle when subject area teachers make the

reading and writing approaches in a given content area clear and visible.

• Effective teaching fosters critical thinking, questioning,

student decision-making, and independent learning.

Effective Teaching across the Disciplines

Comprehension

Strategies

• Teaching

comprehension that

can be taught across

all disciplines

• Supporting teachers

with explicit modeling

as well as the use of

guided practice to

develop student

independence

• Modeling and

incorporating

metacognition into

classrooms

• Monitoring the use of

strategies through an

assessment tool

• Conferring with

students

Text Structures &

Features

• Analyzing a text’s

complexity and

planning and

delivering instruction

that gives students

access points

• Describing text

structures, features,

and text types across

disciplines

• Teaching strategies to

support students through

the reading of complex

texts

Academic

Vocabulary

• Understanding the

explicitly teaching

language acquisition

strategies

• Implementing a

cross content area

strategy for

language

acquisition

• Using assessment to

monitor progress

Writing Strategies

• Building understanding

of purpose, audience,

and text structures

• Increasing the

volume and range

of writing

experiences across

the disciplines

Disciplinary Literacy

• Designing purposeful

tasks to elicit student

understanding about

a topic or text,

including discipline

specific approaches

• Grouping students

strategically to target

instruction

• Monitoring comprehension of

text

• Incorporating the use of

research–based strategies,

such as reciprocal teaching or

collaborative discussion about content/texts

Increasing Volume

and Range

• Following analysis of a

text tracking tool,

deliberately and

strategically increasing

the amount of text

students read in any

given discipline or

across disciplines

and/or increasing the

range of text types

students encounter

in any given

discipline or across

disciplines

Fostering Discussion &

Metacognition

• Approaching

reading as a

purposeful, active

process of

employing

strategies to make

meaning

• Modeling,

guiding and

fostering

independent

use of self-

monitoring

strategies

• Developing a shared

language for talking

about comprehension

and making thinking

visible

Discussion Strategies

• Purposeful planning

for student

conversation

connected to learning

goals

• Providing explicit

instruction and

modeling of

discussion that

facilitates learning

using strategies such

as debate, Socratic

Seminar, etc.

• Grouping students in support of collaboration

and inquiries

61 2017 MSQI Literacy Framework

Effective Teaching across Disciplines

Snapshot 1: Introducing a

Thinking Routine

Targeting Instruction At Middle School 444, Ms. Baker wants her 6th grade students to be aware of how their thinking

changes as they read and gather evidence from a text. She has noticed, especially when students are

reading about familiar topics, that they rely heavily on personal experience and prior knowledge when

answering questions. She selects a Visible Thinking routine from Harvard’s Project Zero that will allow

her students to reflect on their thinking and notice how and why their ideas shift while reading the text.

Modeling the Routine Ms. Baker selects the “I Used To Think… Now I Think…” routine to meet her students’ learning needs.

First, she guides her students thought the routine by explicitly modeling the steps. She points out

and demonstrates how she previews the text by looking at the illustrations, captions, and the first

paragraph. Finally, she summarizes her thinking by sharing it aloud. She leads the class through

reading the article. There are pauses throughout the reading where Ms. Baker gives her students time

to discuss what they are thinking and understanding.

Developing Metacognition After reading through the text, Ms. Baker shows students how to write about their thinking after

reading. In small groups, her students share their shifts in thinking. Discussions focus on identifying

what evidence made students change their ideas. By examining and explaining how and why their

thinking has changed, the students are developing and becoming metacognitive about their reasoning

processes.

Snapshot 2: Reciprocal

Teaching

Modeling Comprehension Strategies 7th grade students in Mr. Garcia’s class are learning to apply comprehension strategies when reading

by using reciprocal teaching. Mr. Garcia uses the lessons in the MSQI Strategic Reading Tutoring

Toolkit to launch reciprocal teaching. In the beginning, he explicitly teaches the four comprehension

strategies of predicting, clarifying, questioning, and summarizing by modeling the strategies on a

shared text with his students. He demonstrates the strategies through the use of think alouds.

Guided Practice Over the next two weeks, Mr. Garcia works with small groups, guiding students through the routine

of using reciprocal teaching strategies. As students progress in their use of the strategies, they work

together in small groups. He monitors each group’s progress, reviewing and taking notes on their

predictions, clarifications, questions, and summaries. This information provides Mr. Garcia with next

steps for whole class, small group, and individual instruction.

2017 MSQI Literacy Framework 2017 MSQI Literacy Framework

Snapshot 3: Text Tracking

Text Tracking At Middle School 444, the 8th grade social studies team meets regularly for common planning. One

shared goal for the team is to bring more varied and complex texts into their classrooms. Using data

gathered from the MSQI Text Tracking Tool, the team recognizes that students were spending less than

30 minutes a day engaged in reading, far short of the recommended 120 minutes.

Selecting Varied Text As the teachers plan the next unit about the Progressive Era, they look for a range of texts, as well as

images and videos to support students’ comprehension of the topics. The team decides to use excerpts

of The Jungle as the unit’s central text.

Using Reciprocal Teaching Students work in groups with a range of texts to compare the various opinions and accounts of specific

events. The social studies teachers use Reciprocal Teaching, a practice that was already introduced

to the students in their ELA class, to support students as they read complex texts. The teachers use

a note-taking template to support the students as they gather information, and they also engage

students in the Reading Like a Historian frames of sourcing and corroborating. At the next team

meeting, teachers comment that not only did the volume of reading increase, but students seemed

more engaged and thought more deeply about what they were reading.

Snapshot 4: Engaging Students in

Discussion - Debate in ELA

Word Generation At Middle School 444, all students engage in weekly debate through the social studies component of

Word Generation. The social studies teachers note that during the debate, students are highly engaged

and gaining confidence in using evidence to support their claims.

The Debate Structure The 6th grade ELA teachers decide to build debate into the next unit of study. Each Wednesday

students have time in groups to discuss arguments related to a motion connected to the plot and

characters of the shared class novel. On Fridays throughout the unit, students are divided into teams

and argue for or against the motion. Teams take turns adding a statement that either supports their

side or refutes that of the opposing team. At the end of the session students return to their groups to

reflect upon if their thinking has changed and how it has changed as a result of the debate..

63

Snapshot 5: Engaging Students in

Discussion - Socratic Seminar

Coaching Support 7th grade ELA classes use Socratic Seminar as a discussion routine. At the beginning of the year Mr.

North selects the text to be used and the questions to be discussed, and he facilitates the discussion.

At the suggestion of the school’s MSQI coach, Mr. North begins to hand over responsibility to the

students. He works with his coach to implement Reciprocal Teaching while students read the text to

support their comprehension and generate meaningful questions.

Increasing Student Generated Talk The students use Reciprocal Teaching to read the text to be discussed. In groups, the students write

debatable questions they would like to discuss and answer. These questions are later shared out with

the whole class. On the day of the seminar, the classroom is set up as two concentric squares where

all desks face the center, and students alternate as participants and observers in the seminar. Mr.

North sets the criteria for discussion, including that students add on to one another’s comments.

The students lead the discussion, starting with sharing the questions they had already generated in

small groups, and Mr. North monitors the students’ contributions, along with the students in the outer

square in their role as observers. In debriefing the seminar, Mr. North and students share glows and

grows that will inform preparation for and participation in the next round of Socratic Seminars.

Snapshot 6: Engaging Students

in Writing - Exit Slips in Science

As one way of increasing the volume of writing students do at school the science teachers at Middle

School 444 introduce written exit slips. At the end of each class, students are asked to write an

important idea they learned on index cards. Once the students are familiar with the idea of exit slips,

the teachers vary the task. Sometimes students are asked to write a question they have, a prediction

about what will come next or a thought about the lesson for the day. Exit slips become a standard

practice and students can choose how to respond on their exit slips. The teachers use these quick-

writes to assess students’ knowledge and to make decisions about next instructional steps or points

that need clarifying.


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“

III. Strategic Instruction to Meet Diverse Learning Needs

It’s not enough knowing what good readers can do or struggling

readers can’t do. We must also know what we believe about

teaching, about learning, and about our role in both. Once that’s

determined, we can make intelligent choices that best suit the

needs of our students.” - Kylene Beers, When Kids Can’t Read,

What Teachers Can Do

We are all sometimes struggling readers, depending on what text we encounter. As Kylene Beers

shares in ‘When Kids Can’t Read… What Teachers Can Do,’ she is a struggling reader when trying to

understand a complex computer manual. However, as an independent reader, she has the tools and

confidence to attempt to break down the text, work through her struggle, and make that struggle into a

productive engagement with the text.

Dependent readers, by contrast, tend to shut down or be at a loss when faced with challenging or

unfamiliar words, phrases, sentences or texts. Dependent readers often assume that reading

comprehension happens magically – you either “get it” or you don’t. Independent readers understand

that readers make meaning from a text using a variety of specific strategies and that different readers

extract both similar and different meaning from texts.

MSQI supports all middle school students in becoming independent readers.

Students come into our classrooms with different strengths and needs. It is our responsibility to

ensure that every single student experiences literacy success as well as a “productive struggle”

through which they can grow. A majority of New York City middle school students have been identified

as underserved. For this reason, strategic instruction to meet learning needs is crucial. Strategic

instruction involves providing intensive, targeted reading instruction to students of all reading levels in

homogeneous groups. It takes into consideration the different starting points of students, their

literacy strengths and needs, and what lessons and activities will ensure that all students grow. In

pursuit of the MSQI goal that every student will leave middle school reading on grade level, strategic

instruction can be particularly important in closing reading comprehension gaps.

There is no one-size-fits all narrative for dependent readers; they struggle to meet grade-level

standards in reading for many different reasons. Without digging deeper and getting to know a

student as an individual reader it may be difficult to identify a specific student’s barriers to reading.

One common trend among dependent readers, though, is that they likely have not been reading high

volume or wide ranges of texts and are likely to be aware of and feel discouraged by their reading

levels.

To support students on a path towards independence and building a strong reading identity, MSQI

focuses on: ongoing use of assessments, strategic reading periods, strategic instruction in reading

comprehension and writing, and regularly occurring specialized targeted teaching.

67

Each of these aspects of strategic instruction to meet diverse learning needs have important tenets in

common:

• The focus of each is on the whole student. This entails considering the content, skills,

strategies, and thinking processes that students need to use and apply. The overarching goal is

for all students to complete grade-level tasks independently.

• A transparent monitoring system needs to be in place to determine when needs have been

addressed or may need modifying. Evidence should be collected on an ongoing basis.

• Regardless of the student needs we are taking into account, the task must remain rigorous and

include higher-order thinking. The task should provide a pathway for students to build on their

skills, knowledge, and expertise and to engage in a “productive struggle.”

• A gradual release of ownership to students to ensure they are developing independence.

• Structures, such as a strategic reading period, are put in place to address the needs of all

students, of all reading levels – within the school’s context and parameters.

• Students are purposefully grouped based on their specific needs, with targeted support

provided as required.

• Students become involved in the process to build their metacognition. Students eventually

articulate and contribute to discussions about what they need, and they can make appropriate

choices of texts and tasks based on their knowledge of their own literacy strengths and areas

for growth.

Ongoing Use of Multiple Assessments

The first step in strategic instruction is to use a range of assessments and diagnostics to identify

starting points and to monitor growth based on each student’s needs. (As described in the first section

of The Instructional Core.)

Teachers must use multiple sources of evidence (DRP, secondary diagnostics if applicable, in-class

assessments, discussions, observations, and more) to identify starting points, determine targets,

set goals, and plan lessons and activities to address differing needs. This is the case in any context –

content area classes, strategic reading period, or another class structure that the school may have.

Strategic Reading Period with Focused Small Groups

Some schools program a strategic reading period into their school day. During the strategic reading

period, students are grouped homogeneously based on their reading profiles to create groups based on

a similar identified need. Instruction of those groups during that strategic reading period then targets

the use of particular reading skills or comprehension strategies, based on students’ levels and needs.

For example, a school might program all 6th graders for strategic reading period during Period 2.

During that period, one group of 6th grade students who struggle with decoding will receive phonics

intervention with Wilson, another group of 6th grade students who are fluent but need support with

reading comprehension will engage in small group reading instruction, and another group of

students reading on grade level will take an advanced or Regents course. Literature circles, debate,

and Socratic seminars can also be incorporated into strategic reading period for students of all

reading levels.


During strategic reading period, teachers focus on monitoring the development of the skills and

strategies identified to benefit the targeted group. Teachers also aim to link the strategies and skills

taught during strategic reading period with reading skill requirements across content areas.

Strategic reading groups may be fluid across the school year, such that students may move from

one group to another as their needs change and diverge from those of the peers within their original

group (e.g. from the Just Words group to a small group reading instruction group), based on teacher

monitoring of progress and growth. This will ensure that all students’ learning needs are met.

Strategic Instruction Outside of Strategic Reading Periods

Schools can still implement strategic instruction without a formally programmed strategic reading

period. Furthermore, even if a school does not have a strategic reading period, it is critical to target

homogeneous groups of students through strategic instruction, especially to support students who

need to grow the most as readers.

One way to do this is through incorporating strategic instruction in reading comprehension and

writing into all classrooms. Strategic instruction across content areas means that teachers target

the different reading and writing needs in their classes. They employ strategic groupings, confer

with students, establish multiple entry points for readers, use texts at an array of levels, and provide

support to develop strategies, skills, and independence. With strategic instruction across content

areas, all teachers consider the purpose of the tasks they assign students, as well as the specific

skills, knowledge, and strategies students need to complete those tasks. Based on teachers’ in-depth

knowledge of students as evolving readers and writers, teachers then decide on the supports students

need to complete tasks successfully, based on their learning goals. This decision includes which texts

will be used.

A second way to incorporate strategic instruction outside of a programmed strategic reading period

is through specialized targeted teaching for particular groups, also known as push in or pull out.

Dependent readers comprise a diverse group, and any interventions offered to them must target their

specific learning needs. We know that explicit literacy instruction is necessary for these groups of

students to make significant gains – but there is no singular, quick solution. Some interventions in

alternative settings are effective for some students; some students are not always best served in pull-

out programs but might benefit most in their reading and learning from instructional adaptations and

accommodations within the content area classroom (Fisher, 2001; Jacobson et al, 2001). Determining

the best targeted or specialized intervention for any given student requires administering assessments

to diagnose the student’s reading and literacy needs and set goals, identifying a strategic support,

and continuously monitoring the student’s progress towards their goals to assess whether that

particular intervention is effective.

27


Strategic Teaching

• All of us are sometimes struggling readers, and we aim for

all students to become independent readers. There is no

one-size-fits-all narrative for dependent readers.

• Strategic instruction to meet learning needs, which involves

providing targeted reading instruction to students of all

reading levels in homogeneous groups, is crucial for all

students but particularly readers who are below grade level

or at risk.

• In strategic instruction, teachers of all content areas use

multiple sources of evidence and assessment in an ongoing

way to determine targets, set goals, and plan lessons and

activities to address students’ differing needs, whether

in a content class, a strategic period, or another class.

A transparent monitoring system must be in place to

determine when students’ needs have been addressed or

need modifying.

• Students must become involved in the monitoring process so

they can build metacognitive understanding of the strategies

they use and also assess the support they need.

• A gradual release approach should be incorporated with

checks for understanding, to ensure students develop

independence.

• Regardless of students’ needs, tasks must remain rigorous

and include higher-order thinking, and enable students to

work within a productive struggle.”

• Students are purposefully grouped for their specific needs,

with targeted support provided as required.

• Suitable structures, such as a strategic reading period, are

put in place to cater to the needs of all students, within the

school’s context and parameters.


Strategic Literacy Instruction:

Specialized Targeted Teaching

• Providing tier 2 and tier 3 reading

interventions for students most in

need

Programming to

Support All

Readers

• Scheduling and teaching a ladder of

intervention and acceleration for all students

29

Strategic Reading

Period Snapshot

Grouping Students

After the Fall administration of the DRP and secondary diagnostics at Middle School 444, Ms. Ruiz, the

MSQI Coordinator, uses the data to create homogeneous groupings of students based on their reading

comprehension levels or decoding and fluency needs.

Targeting Learning Needs

Across the school for 45 minutes per day for each grade, students are assigned to a Strategic Reading

Period (SRP). In one SRP group, Mr. Johnson works with a group of readers that scored below

grade level for comprehension but are able to read with a decent rate and accuracy. He uses the

comprehension rubric to identify the different strategies students use to make sense of their reading

and notes areas where they need support. Based on this information, Mr. Johnson creates varying

stations for his students.

Small Group Instruction

During one lesson, Mr. Johnson models summarizing. He demonstrates for students how to use the

strategy. He takes this group through a guided reading session focused on using the strategy, using an

article at the students’ instructional level. As students develop their use of the strategy, he adjusts his

instruction accordingly.

Students engage in a reading

routine (above) and seated students

participate in text-based discussion

while standing peers observe for

specific discussion behaviors (right)


References Beck, Isabel. (2013). Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction, 2nd edition. New York:

Guilford.

Fisher, D. (2001). Cross age tutoring: Alternatives to the reading resource room for struggling

adolescent readers. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 28(4), 234–240.

Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement.

London: Routledge.

Jacobson, J., Thrope, L., Fisher, D., Lapp, D., Frey, N., & Flood, J. (2001). Cross-age tutoring: A literacy

improvement approach for struggling adolescent readers. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy,

44(6), 528–536.

73


Literacy Leadership

Teacher Collaboration

Professional Learning

Family & School

Partnerships


“


I. Leading Literacy Learning If you had to name one thing that every school should do well,

you would have to consider deep literacy as standing head and

shoulders over all priorities. It is the key to every student’s future.

Therefore, the main role of the principal is to mobilize everyone –

teachers, parents, students – to make literacy happen.”-Michael Fullan

In their book The Literacy Principal, David Booth and Jennifer Roswell do not mince words about

the importance of principal leadership in effecting literacy-related change; principals are absolutely

essential. A growing body of research indicates that very few schools have been turned around

without the intervention of a principal who has set clear priorities and goals that are followed

through with effective strategy (Marzano, Waters, & McNulty, 2005). As the literacy leaders in their

school communities, principals model the beliefs, practices, and passion about literacy that have a

direct impact on student learning. For these reasons, MSQI has identified literacy leadership as the

foundation of all of the work we do.

MSQI has also selected The Literacy Principal as a grounding text for our principals, to support

principals in inspiring staff, students, and families in pursuit of a shared vision for student achievement

in literacy. This shared literacy vision must clearly communicate the goals and high expectations for

students that will be upheld by the school community.

To lead change in their schools, effective literacy leaders have a central belief system that is focused

on student learning. Leaders support literacy in their buildings when they:

• Articulate a literacy vision and annual goals

• Model own literate life in interactions with adults and students

• Commit to on-going self-growth and literacy development

• Distribute literacy leadership roles across school (School Leadership Team, teacher leadership,

literacy coordinator/coach)

• Engage families around adolescent literacy

• Provide space and time for both adult and student literacy learning

• Develop and align systems for measuring effective literacy instruction

• Align resources to literacy goals

• Align school program to literacy goals

• Develop external literacy partnerships

Modeling Collaboration While the principal must create the conditions for literacy change within a school, she cannot foster

a culture of literacy entirely on her own. Wide-scale change, in which all teachers are committed to a

common literacy vision and the literacy achievement of students, requires collaboration.

75

MSQI recommends that principals develop a literacy team devoted to developing literacy practices

that lead to students’ ongoing growth. This literacy team – composed of principal, assistant principals,

teacher leaders, and literacy coordinators or coaches, for instance – works with your MSQI coach to

identify specific literacy goals, develop an action plan to address and reflect progress towards these

goals, and build teacher capacity.

Together, the literacy team recommends a program that reflects the school’s commitment to

maximizing student literacy and learning time and is aligned to the school’s literacy vision and goals.

They model a culture in which teamwork is expected and valued and in which time is given for teacher

teams to meet to discuss literacy. They also develop external literacy partnerships with the community

and engage families in adolescent literacy through school-based events and informing families of

student progress.

Ongoing Reflection MSQI provides ongoing support for principals in developing, communicating, and refining meaningful,

shared literacy visions and literacy goals for their schools. We create various opportunities for MSQI

principals to collaborate with and learn from each other throughout each school year, including but

not limited to leadership site visits, leadership retreats, and MSQI school intervisitations.

Additionally, our MSQI coaches can be thought partners for principals and school literacy teams in

their continuous reflection about literacy visions and goals throughout the school year. We recommend

a number of high-leverage questions that can foster inquiry and guide meaningful reflection for

principals and other literacy leaders, including the following that align with MSQI’s framework:

Effective Teaching Across Disciplines • What are our literacy expectations and how do we develop them? How do we communicate

them? How do we foster a culture of high expectations of students and challenge low

expectations?

• How do we form a coherent vision and create a whole school literacy program out of all of the

separate parts?

• Do both horizontal and vertical curriculum maps incorporate appropriate literacy strategies?

What overlaps and gaps occur across the curriculum?

• How do we assess the effectiveness of literacy teaching across the curriculum? How do we

assess adult progress in literacy teaching and match support to goals and needs?

• How do we identify ineffective literacy teaching practices and help to eliminate or change

them?

Strategic Instruction & Tiered Literacy Assessment • How do we assess children to determine their levels, skills, interests, strengths, and supports

they need? How often do we assess this? How do we measure student growth?

• How do we communicate assessment results to teachers and school leaders?

• How do we build time into the school day to individualize instruction according to assessed

need?

• How do we know students are making progress in individualized groups? How do we keep

groups flexible enough to meet evolving needs?


• How do we (particularly our teacher teams) use student formative and summative assessments

to determine effective teaching methods and curriculum?

Engaging Students with Complex Texts

• -Do individual teachers incorporate literacy learning across the curriculum?

• -What literacy resources – library, books, electronic texts, and more - do we make available to

our teachers and students? How do we match these to student interest and need? How do we

share these resources with texts?

Literacy Leadership • How do we convey our vision across multiple stakeholders and constituencies?

• How can we ensure our vision is alive in the day-to-day?

• Does the school schedule meet the developmental needs of young adults?

• Does our school program illustrate and support our investment in literacy and our literacy

vision?

• What materials and resources does the school need to pursue our goals?

Teacher Collaboration & Professional Learning • What are the key literacy roles and responsibilities we need to have covered in our school? Who

is filling these roles, and what support do they need to effectively execute these roles?

• What are our professional development goals (five-year plan) and do they align to our literacy

vision?

• How do we maximize adult learning throughout the week and across the year (through after-

school PD, coaches, external vendors, external PDs, etc.)?

• How do we assess staff needs and determine what kinds of professional learning staff need?

• How do we build teacher buy-in and community around our literacy vision and goals?

• How do we use best practices in our school and other schools as models for adult

development?

• How do we support teachers and school leaders in assessing their own literacy teaching

practices and setting goals for improvement?

• How do we (particularly our teacher teams) use student formative and summative assessments

to determine effective teaching methods and curriculum?

School and Family Partnerships • How do we express and share our literacy goals in a multi-lingual, socio-economically and

culturally diverse community?

• What must we learn about students and their literacy needs from families? How do we go

about doing so?

• How do we make use of families as a resource in our literacy program?

• How do we effectively communicate information about students’ literacy levels, skills, interests,

strengths, needs, and progress to students and their families?

77


Key Underpinnings of Literacy

Leadership

• To lead change in schools, principals must develop a shared

literacy vision for their school and maintain a clear focus on

it, even in the face of multiple initiatives.

• Effective literacy leaders work with a literacy team to model

collaboration, identify specific literacy goals, develop external

literacy partnerships and engage families in student literacy,

and recommend a program that reflects the school’s literacy

commitments.

• Effective principals engage in ongoing reflection about their

schools’ literacy visions and goals with fellow leaders and

thought partners.

• Strong literacy leaders maintain high expectations to enable

staff and student growth, ensure that each staff member has

a defined literacy-related role in the school, and prioritize

and provide resources for selected literacy areas targeted for

improvement.

• To ensure that professional learning is an ongoing and

essential aspect of continuous improvement, leaders create

structures that support aligned, cohesive teacher learning.

• Literacy leaders model growth mindsets about literacy

and continuously engage the entire school community in

authentic literacy experiences through book clubs and

professional learning.

• Leaders ensure that teaching and learning are informed by

an ongoing evaluation process that builds upon real-time

data.

Collaboration and

professional learning

in action

67

Literacy Leaderships

Literacy Vision

& Goals

• Creating a coherent

literacy plan that

aligns with other

school and/or

district policies and

efforts

• Utilizing new or

existing school

structures such

as decision

making teams,

administrative and

teacher leaders,

as well as outside

support to launch

and monitor the

literacy plan

Modeling &

On-Going

Reflection

• Modeling effective

literacy practices,

and a joy of

reading, for staff,

students, and

families

• Sharing and

discussing books

and articles of

interest throughout

the school

community

• Engaging in on-

going reflection

strategies (self-

assessments,

journaling, inquiry,

connecting with

mentors, sharing

with colleagues,

etc.) that allow

for continuous

development of

the principal as a

literacy leader

Distributive

Literacy

Leadership

• Establishing a

literacy team

devoted to

developing literacy

practices that

lead to students’

ongoing growth as

readers, writers,

and thinkers

• Developing

teacher leaders

as literacy leaders

who are able to

guide colleagues’

understanding of

and development

around adolescent

literacy

Resources

& Programming

• Providing space

and time for both

adult and student

literacy learning

• Aligning resources

to literacy goals

• Developing external

partnerships

• Releasing teachers

for formal

and informal

professional

development


References Booth, D. W., & Rowsell, J. (2002). The literacy principal: Leading, supporting and assessing reading

and writing initiatives. Markham, Ont.: Pembroke.

Fullan, M. (2005). Leadership & Sustainability. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.

Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement.

London: Routledge.

Marzano, R., Waters, T. & McNulty, B. (2005). School Leadership that Works: From research to results.

Alexandra: ASCD and McREL joint publication.

Robinson, V., Hohepa, M., and Lloyd, C. (2007) School Leadership and Student Outcomes: Identifying

What Works and Why .Ministry of Education Wellington

69

II. Teacher Collaboration Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.”-Helen Keller

One important shift in schools over the last two decades has been a growing emphasis on teacher

collaboration. Fostering collaboration is at the heart of MSQI’s work, because while individual teachers

can support tremendous student learning gains, we recognize the magnified power of effective teacher

teams. Teacher teaming is a powerful predictor of student achievement and can offset the effect of

many challenges students may face (Goddard, 2001; Goddard et al, 2007; Ross et al, 2004).

Teacher collaboration is not a new concept in New York City schools; formerly the Citywide Instructions

Expectations and presently the Framework for Great Schools and the Quality Review draw clear

expectations for teacher teaming. MSQI supports schools in meeting those expectations, with a focus

on adolescent literacy. Our goal is to develop a culture of collaborative, professional learning both

within schools and across the MSQI community.

Students’ daily routine often changes in middle school compared to elementary school; they move

from classroom to classroom and see more than one teacher over the course of the day. This shift can

cause inconsistency in literacy instruction. MSQI supports middle school teachers who teach the same

students in meeting regularly and purposefully to look at student work and align instructional best

practices across content areas. Teacher teams can thus re-establish coordinated instruction in middle

school, foster teacher collegiality, and heighten the likelihood that no child will slip through the cracks

(Biancarosa & Snow, 2006).

School leaders play a crucial role in teacher collaboration, as teacher teams operate within a larger

distributive leadership framework in each school. Scheduled and prioritized time for teams to meet

regularly with colleagues has been proven to promote instructional improvement. Research shows

that when teacher teams regularly meet around a specific focus, we learn from one another and have

a significant impact on student learning. The stronger a teacher team’s perception of its own capacity

to positively affect student literacy, the more likely it is to put in the collaborative effort necessary to

achieve such success (Goddard, Hoy, & Hoy, 2004).

The makeup of teacher teams can vary greatly from school to school, and teacher teams can adopt a

variety of different purposes. The following are some teaming activities that MSQI supports:

Looking at Student Work To be effective, it is important that teachers have substantial and regular meetings (two to three

periods per week) that are deliberately structured to result in improved instruction. Looking at student

work together in a meaningful way as a teacher team is of critical importance because it grounds

the instructional decisions we make in concrete, low-inference data about students’ strengths and

areas for growth. Many effective teams use protocols – such as National School Reform Faculty’s

Tuning Protocol – to structure their analysis of student work and provide agreed-upon guidelines for

conversations, to minimize the inaccuracies often caused by “leaping up the inference ladder” too

quickly.


Many schools have used Word Generation as a starting point for interdisciplinary teams to come

together to look at student writing and mastery of academic vocabulary. That said, teachers can

collect student work of all kinds as evidence that provides a window into student learning. This kind

of evidence can come from writing samples, classroom assessments, student self-reflections, and

teacher observations.

Cycles of Learning / Inquiry Cycles Cycles of learning involve teachers using an inquiry approach to drive positive student literacy growth;

they are teacher-led and require teachers to learn by doing. Effective teacher teams use inquiry

protocols to develop a common understanding of what we need to learn to improve literacy outcomes

for students.

In cycles of learning, teachers come together around a common, specific problem of practice and

follow a cycle of “plan, do, study, and act” to improve their practice. Most teacher team inquiry cycles

start with looking at student work through a low-inference lens to observe trends and patterns,

identify a gap in students’ skills to be the focal point of the inquiry cycle, and then develop a research-

based hypothesis about what instructional practice might address this gap. The remainder of the

cycle involves the team exploring that hypothesis, by crafting lessons collaboratively, visiting each

other’s classrooms, and collecting data. They the team debriefs together to assess the impact of its

instructional moves and the accuracy of its hypothesis.

From there, the team can choose to continue to focus on the same area of student learning, and in

this way cycles of learning can guide teams in continuously refining and honing best practices based

on their impact on students. The most powerful element of cycles of learning is their foundation in

assessing whether changes in practice have a desirable impact on student outcomes (Timperley,

Wilson, Barrar, & Fung, 2007).

Japanese Lesson Study Japanese lesson study originally emerged in the field of mathematics, as a structured way for teachers

to identify a common student area of growth, conduct research, collaboratively plan a lesson, and

evaluate selected instructional practices as potential ways to support student growth in the focus area.

MSQI supports teachers and schools in implementing Japanese lesson study with a focus on improving

student outcomes in literacy. The Japanese lesson study cycle has six phases:

1. Identifying a specific literacy-related learning goal for students.

2. Collaboratively planning a lesson focused on addressing that goal.

3. Observing the lesson. One of the teachers in the group teaches in their classroom, and all

other group members observe and collect data focused on the group’s learning goal.

4. Debriefing the first teaching of the lesson and consolidating the group’s learning from the

initial teaching. Identifying adjustments that may support the pursuit of the group’s goal.

5. Re-teaching the lesson by one of the teachers (it could be the same teacher as the original

teaching). The other group members observe and collect data again.

6. Debriefing the overall learnings from the process, evaluating the group’s progress towards

their goal, and reflecting on the lesson study cycle as a whole.

71

Labsites, Intervisitations, and Demonstration Sites Providing opportunities for teachers to share successful instructional practices is important to improve

practice across a school. MSQI supports the creation of lab-sites both within and across schools. Most

often, lab-sites are classrooms that other teachers can visit to see promising literacy practices in

action. MSQI coaches can support lab-site teachers in preparing their classrooms for peer visits and

often also facilitate follow-up conversations and work with visiting teachers to support implementation

of these practices in their classrooms as well. In this way, strategic lab-sites and intervisitations with

scheduled, meaningful follow-up can leverage improvements in literacy instruction

MSQI also supports visits between schools each school year, which we call Demonstration Site Visits.

During these visits, hosting MSQI schools demonstrate strong literacy models and interventions

for administrators and teachers at other MSQI schools. Demonstration Site Visits promote effective

practices across schools, and they serve as examples of practice that can be incorporated into a

visiting school’s professional learning plan.


Key Underpinnings of Teacher

Collaboration:

• Teacher teams are a powerful predictor of student

achievement. They operate within a larger distributive

leadership framework.

• Teacher collaboration helps align teaching practices across

classrooms. It supports content area teachers in developing

common beliefs about how students learn best.

• Effective teacher teams review and analyze student work

together. They use the information they gather to make

evidence-based adjustments to units and lessons.

• Looking at student work in teacher teams grounds

instructional decisions in concrete, low inference data.

• To ensure that professional learning is an ongoing and

essential aspect of continuous improvement, leaders create

structures that support aligned, cohesive teacher learning.

• Inquiry cycles and Japanese lesson study are two high-

impact teaming practices.

• Regular opportunities for teachers to share successful

instructional practices support teachers in improving their

practice. Scheduled time for teams to meet regularly with

colleagues, engage in professional dialogue, and share

resources promotes best practices.

Teacher team

in action

73

Teacher Collaboration

Strategies for Teacher Collaboration

• Using multiple data streams to make

instructional decisions

• Collaborating across content areas with a

focus on literacy

• Utilizing protocols to guide low-interference

analysis and discussion

Scheduled Time for Teams to Meet

• Programming time within the school day for

teacher teams to meet

• Developing and supporting teacher leaders

• Using and adapting protocols and other

routines for meeting time


References Biancarosa, C., & Snow, C. E. (2006). Reading next - A vision for action and research in middle and high

school literacy: A report to Carnegie Corporation of NewYork (2nd ed.).Washington, DC:Alliance for

Excellent Education.

Bryk, Anthony S., Louis M. Gomez, Alicia Grunow, and Paul G LeMahieu. Learning to Improve: How

America’s Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2015.

DuFour, Richard, DuFour, Rebecca, Eaker, Robert, and Many, Thomas (2010). Learning by Doing

(second edition). Solution Tree Press: Bloomington, IN.

Goddard, R. D. (2001). Collective efficacy: A neglected construct in the study of schools and student

achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93, 467-476.

Goddard, R. D. (2003). Relational networks, social trust, and norms: A social capital perspective on

students’ chances of academic success. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 25(1), 59-74.

Goddard, R. D., & Goddard, Y. L. (2001). A multilevel analysis of the relationship between teacher and

collective efficacy in urban schools. Teaching and Teacher Education, 17(2001), 807–818.

Goddard, R. D., Hoy, W. K., & Hoy, A. W. (2004). Collective efficacy beliefs: Theoretical developments,

empirical evidence, and future directions. Educational Researcher, 33(3), 3-13.

National School Reform Faculty. http://www.nsrfharmony.org/

Senge, P. M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. Doubleday:

New York, NY.

Timperley, H. S., Wilson, A., Barrar, H., & Fung, I. (2007). Teacher professional learning and

development: Best Evidence Synthesis iteration [BES]. Wellington: Ministry of Education. Retrieved 10

August 2009 (www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications).

http://www.nsrfharmony.org/

http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications)

75

III. Professional Learning We should seek ways to implement and support professional

development programs that not only empower teachers to succeed

in the present but enable them to grow over time.” -Sandra Harwell,

Teacher Professional Development: It’s Not an Event, It’s a Process

The effectiveness of adult learning within a school typically reflects and directly impacts the quality of

student learning at the school. Research has proven that we can usually get an accurate impression

of the quality of classroom instruction in a school by looking at the school’s program for professional

learning. For this reason, strong, ongoing, and cohesive professional learning for teachers and leaders

is vital to the implementation of a school-wide literacy vision that grows students’ literacy.

MSQI supports literacy leaders in developing a cohesive and comprehensive year-long plan for

adult professional learning. We also provide quality professional learning opportunities for school

communities to build sustainable, effective classroom practices that meet students’ needs.

Professional learning can serve many, often overlapping functions. It can be a tool to improve school

performance, to improve classroom instruction, to support the implementation of new initiatives, and

to build internal capacity through learning from others.

While professional learning can take many forms, MSQI has identified several characteristics of

effective professional development that result in improved school culture, instruction, and student

outcomes in literacy:

Literacy Professional Learning is Ongoing and Embedded within

the Context of the School First and foremost, effective literacy learning aligns to a year-long professional development plan.

This ensures that each professional development session or activity will directly support the school’s

overarching literacy vision and the gradual release of ownership of the learning to teachers; in short,

all activities strategically fit together from both administrators’ and teachers’ perspectives. To achieve

this, it can help for the literacy team to backwards plan a year-long PD calendar in advance of a new

school year.

Literacy learning will be most impactful to adults when embedded within the everyday context of the

school. Some examples of embedded professional learning are classroom intervisitations focused on

particular skills or strategies, instructional walk-throughs with administrators and coaches, having

teachers co-plan and co-teach lessons with a mentor or coach to receive real-time feedback, and

the development of lab-sites for teachers to visit as needed. These types of activities involve actual

instruction with students in your school, as well as immediate debriefing and analysis, and can

therefore ensure that adult learning is directly connected to teachers’ craft.


Effective and cohesive professional learning like this demands time and focus from teachers, and

therefore literacy leaders must prioritize professional learning by providing teachers with ample

time, space and support. As mentioned in the earlier section on teacher collaboration, teacher teams

(both horizontal and vertical) are a powerful unit for adult professional learning, particularly if literacy

leaders program consistent, weekly common planning time for teams to meet and engage in this

learning.

In facilitating literacy learning, leaders must build in ongoing support for teacher teams and a gradual

release of responsibility to teachers over the course of the learning cycle. This cycle and gradual

release require introducing teachers to a new literacy strategy, with clear expected next steps and

a time frame of implementation. Gradual release also requires literacy leaders and coaches follow-

up when teachers are making initial attempts and grappling with that strategy. It is important that

administrators provide that timeframe as a space when teachers can try new things without the

expectation of perfection and that administrators follow up during that time in a non-evaluative,

supportive way.

For example, a principal could have her literacy coach introduce a particular literacy strategy to an

entire department during after school professional development time, stating that over the next three

weeks teachers are expected to start implementing that strategy. During a coaching day after that

PD session, the MSQI coach may meet with a teacher team to discuss their attempts and visits their

classrooms to provide feedback or co-teaches with them to support. During the three weeks after the

session, members of the literacy team also communicate with teachers and the MSQI coach about

progress, and they visit classrooms to provide explicitly non-evaluative feedback on the teachers’ initial

attempts to implement the strategy.

The work of the MSQI coach, then, can be incorporated into a year-long professional development plan

in this manner. Coaches provide site-based professional learning and immediate, actionable feedback,

and therefore MSQI coaches can be strategically scheduled and utilized to maximize adult learning and

help teachers refine their practice in their own classrooms.

Literacy Professional Learning Fosters Collaboration Within

and Across Schools Effective adult learning fosters collaboration within and across schools; and, likewise, collaboration

within and across schools enhances professional learning. Shared responsibility for student

achievement, whether across a district or school community, consistently leads to positive changes.

Research hammers home this point. A five-year study of 1,500 schools undergoing comprehensive

reform showed that schools with ongoing professional learning communities saw great gains in

student achievement, and their teacher team collaboration narrowed the achievement gap among

students from low-income homes.

Strong literacy leaders establish structures that sustain professional learning for the entire school

staff and distribute shared responsibility for student achievement. To support this collaboration,

77

principals and literacy teams develop a long-term professional development plan that includes

strategic ways to utilize the MSQI coach. The MSQI coach can, in turn, support teacher teams or

professional learning communities, which, as mentioned previously, are a critical structure in effective

professional learning and have proven to heighten teacher investment and engagement in learning.

To foster collaboration and enhance adult learning, teacher teams can engage in a number of high-

leverage professional learning activities (many of which were described in more detail in the earlier

Teacher Collaboration section): data-based inquiry cycles focused on particular student needs, skills,

or instructional strategies; Japanese lesson study; strategic classroom intervisitations; analysis of

professional texts; lab sites; or inter-school visitations, among others.

MSQI coaches can strategically support this work, as well as a model of release that gradually shifts

ownership and responsibility for the work to the teacher team itself. Coaches can also support teacher

teams in seeing literacy promising practices in action and planning next steps to integrate those

practices into other classrooms.

Literacy Learning is Evidence-Based and Data-Driven All adult learning must begin with and build from data gleaned from a low-inference analysis of

student work. This ensures the professional learning is most closely aligned to students’ literacy needs

and in turn will enable teachers to learn to differentiate learning and meet the unique needs of all

students.

In an effective teacher team or professional learning community, data encourages reflection, inquiry,

and dialogue; data drives the planning. For instruction and student literacy to improve, professional

development must adhere to an ongoing improvement cycle that uses data to both guide adult learning

and measure the impact of that learning.

Literacy leaders can strategically use MSQI in their literacy plans to build an understanding of and

emphasis on data in adult learning. MSQI coaches can support teacher teams in implementing

protocols for looking at student work to identify focal points of student literacy needs and adult literacy

learning and to both drive cycles of inquiry and measure progress around these focal points. Once all

teacher teams consistently use student data as the central source of their learning, literacy leaders

can directly link teacher team findings and learning to the school’s comprehensive literacy plan.

Adult Literacy Learning is Differentiated The most impactful teachers often value continuous learning at all ages, both inside and outside the

context of school. These teachers tend to see the direct correlation between teacher learning and

student learning (the “teaching-learning relationship”) - both in terms of the impact of their improved

instructional practices and also in the power of modeling lifelong curiosity, joy of reading, and love of

learning for their students. They tend to engage passionately with opportunities for themselves - not

only their students - to learn and grow.

In order for teachers to invest in this way in professional literacy learning within the context of their

schools, they need meaningful, targeted opportunities to think deeply about their craft, engage in


authentic conversation about instructional practices and student work with colleagues and the broader

school community, exercise ownership over their own learning, and productively struggle with new

concepts and strategies that connect to the school’s literacy vision.

In this way, adults’ learning needs can be parallel to students’ learning needs – and just as diverse.

Therefore effective adult learning, much like effective classroom instruction, is differentiated to meet

the needs of all learners in the room and to take into account teachers’ learning styles, previous

experiences, and current strengths and areas for growth.

To provide multiple entry points and foster teacher ownership, professional learning must provide

opportunities for teachers to discuss problems of practice, to make choices about what to prioritize

in the learning, to acquire and practice best general pedagogy practices, and to build research-based

knowledge about their specific content areas and how students learn, read, and write in that field.

To support relatability and transference, teacher literacy professional learning must be grounded in

teachers’ everyday instruction, in the content teachers teach, and in work and data from their own

students.

79

Professional Learning

Embedding Literacy

within the School Context

• Providing space and time for

teams of teachers to resolve

challenges and issues

around literacy teaching

• Articulating a year-long

literacy professional

development plan that is

aligned to the whole school

professional development

plan and is in alignment

with the school’s literacy

vision and goals

Fostering Collaboration

• Allowing space and time for

cross-sections of teachers

and teams to resolve

challenges and share

promising practices

• Participating in district-

wide, or external,

professional development

sessions, such as

intervisitations, that allow

for teachers and teacher

teams to voice specific

issues, concerns, reflections

and questions with a larger

group of practitioners

focused on similar goals

Differentiation

• Providing learning

experiences that meet the

needs of all learners in the

room, taking into account

teachers’ learning styles,

previous experiences, and

current strengths and areas

for growth

• Grounding professional

learning in teachers’

everyday instruction, in the

content areas they teach,

and in work and data from

their own students


References Bryk, A., Camburn, E., & Louis, K. (1999). Professional community in Chicago elementary schools:

Facilitating factors and organizational consequences. Educational Administration Quarterly, 35, 751-

781.

Calkins, A., Guenther, W., Belfiore, G., & Lash, D. (2007). The turnaround challenge: Why America’s

best opportunity to dramatically improve student achievement lies in our worst-performing schools.

Boston MA: Mass Insight Education & Research Institute.

Elmore, R. (2002) Bridging the gap between standards and achievement: The imperative for

professional development in Education. Washington DC: Albert Shanker Institute.

Hammond, L., Wei, R., Andree, A., Richardson, N., and Orphanos, S. (2009) Professional learning in the

learning profession: A status report on teacher development in the United States and abroad. NSDC

and the School of Redesign Network at Stanford University.

Hattie, J. (2003). Teachers make a difference What is the research evidence? Australian Council for

Educational Research.

Killion, J. (2012) Meet the promise of content standards: Professional learning required. Oxford, OH:

Learning Forward.

Marzano, R. J., Waters, T., & McNulty, B. (2005). School leadership that works: From research to

results. Aurora, CO: ASCD and McREL.

NSDC POLICY POINTS: Information for policy makers about professional development that improves

student results Vol. 1, No. 2 April 2009

Silva, E. (2008). The bentwood plan: A lesson in comprehensive teacher reform. Washington, DC

Education Sector

Supovitz, J. A., & Christman, J. B. (2003). Developing communities of instructional practice: Lessons

for Cincinnati and Philadelphia. CPRE Policy Briefspp. 1-9. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania.

Timperley, H., Wilson, A., Barrar, H., & Fung, I. (2007). Teacher professional learning and development:

Best Evidence Synthesis Iteration. Wellington: Ministry of Education.

Weiss, I., & Pasley. J., (2006). Scaling up instructional improvement through teacher professional [1]

development: Insights from the local systemic change initiative Philadelphia. PA. Consortium for Policy

Research in Education (CPRE) Policy Briefs.

Wenglinsky, H. (2000). How teaching matters: Bringing the classroom back into discussions of teacher

quality. Princeton, NJ: Milken Family Foundation and Educational Testing Service.

Yoon, K. S., Duncan, T., Lee, S. W.Y., Scarloss, B., & Shapley, K. (2007). Reviewing the evidence on how

teacher professional development affects student achievement (Issues & Answers Report, REL 2007-

No. 033). Washington, DC: U.S.

81

IV. Family & School Partnerships To learn at high levels, all students need the guidance and support

of their teachers, families, and others in the community.” - Joyce L. Epstein and Karen Clark Salinas,

Schools as Learning Communities

All parents, families, and caregivers have the best intentions for their children and want to support

them to do their best – including at school and in the realm of literacy. They can have tremendous,

positive impact on students’ literacy learning; research has long shown a direct correlation between a

parents’ involvement in their children’s education and these students’ educational success.

Parents and teachers are important co-educators. The parent or guardian is the expert on the

individual child, while the teacher is the expert on the curriculum that must be mastered for academic

success. All parents have the ability to assist their child in pursuit of their academic success, and

effective parent involvement can happen in every home.

Parents, families, and caregivers bring a wide range of experiences that contribute to students’

learning. They can help considerably in supporting students to develop their reading and writing

outside of school, particularly by supporting students to read and write more, be exposed to more

words, consider more perspectives and viewpoints, think more deeply, and interpret more texts. MSQI

supports schools in partnering with parents, families, and caregivers to analyze and understand their

children’s literacy data and to provide suggested strategies, processes, and activities that they can

engage in at home to support student literacy.

To maximize relationships with families, it is crucial to develop positive partnerships between

home and school. In working with students’ families, educators must first assess and let go of our

assumptions; this important step paves the way to learn about families. Before important academic

information can be shared, schools and families must establish positive communication and address

any barriers.

It is our responsibility as educators to ensure parents, families, and caregivers feel valued, welcome,

and engaged in partnering with us to grow students’ literacy. This sometimes requires literacy

leaders to make concerted efforts and dedicate resources to enable and encourage families to spend

meaningful time in the school building and working with teachers.

MSQI partners with several programs that support schools and literacy leaders in maximizing family

relationships and engagement:

Academic Parent-Teacher Teams (APTT)

Academic Parent-Teacher Teams take place in the school building and foster collaboration between

schools and parents. APTT brings parents and teachers together for structured dialogue about

students’ grade-level curriculum and learning targets, students’ literacy strengths and areas of

opportunity, and ways that families can support students’ literacy growth at home.


In APTT workshops, administrators and teachers gain expertise in:

• Using family engagement as an instructional strategy and enlisting parents and families as leaders

in the school community and in classrooms.

• Implementing a systemic approach to family engagement that is focused on students’ academic

goals and is grounded in an asset-based mindset about student learning.

• Developing foundational skills for engaging with parents in meetings and conferences.

• Effectively sharing data with families to establish academic goals.

• Creating effective classroom networks focused on student success.

APTT partnerships aim to establish strong, trusting relationships between school and home. They

provide families with opportunities to feel more connected to the school and more comfortable posing

questions about their children’s learning.

Parent-Teacher Home Visit Project (PTHVP) Home visits provide a rich opportunity for cross-cultural learning for teachers and families, and MSQI

has partnered with the Parent-Teacher Home Visit Project to strengthen partnerships with families.

PTHVP home visits consist of a student’s primary class teacher going to meet the student’s family in

their own home, as a way to better understand who the child is and what their home life is like and to

begin a critically important relationship with the family.

During the first home visit, families, teachers, and students find common ground through discussing

their hopes and dreams for the child. Those shared values become an action plan for success, so

parents can take next steps to support their students, and teachers can use what they learned to

differentiate instruction in the classroom. Educators return from their visits and participate in a

reflection about how their assumptions going into the visits were challenged and what they have

learned about their students.

A few other factors that contribute to the effectiveness of PTHVP include:

• Visits are conducted across the general population of students. No student is targeted for

academic or behavioral problems, so there is no stigma attached to or resulting from visits.

• Visits are voluntary, and both teachers and families agree to conduct them. Appointments are

made in advance, so no families are ever surprised to find a teacher at their door.

• Teachers and school staff are compensated for their time, either by receiving a stipend for

each visit or being provided with designated time within their schedule. This ensures visits are

sustainable and not an add-on.

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Family & School Partnerships:

• All parents, families and caregivers have the best intentions

for their students. Parents and teachers are both important

co-educators.

• Stronger connections with schools are fostered with parents,

families, and caregivers when the interactions are positive

or constructive. While there will be times when difficult

conversations need to take place, it’s important that there

are also times for conversations that have a positive/

constructive focus.

• The professional relationships developed between families

and teachers have positive impact on learning in schools.

• Focusing conversations around meaningful and user-friendly

data and evidence supports parents, families, and caregivers

to understand where their children are with regards to their

reading and set goals for growth.

• Parents, families, and caregivers can provide useful insights

into the reading practices and habits of children, which can

be used to support them develop their reading and writing in

and out of school.

• Awareness of expectations for reading and writing outside

of school and a bank of activities, strategies, resources

(including those outside the school) they can use helps them

to ensure reading is happening outside of school, especially

when parents, families, caregivers are often managing other

considerations simultaneously

• Ongoing communication helps to maintain the engagement.

Setting up how this is to take place ensures the expectations

are clear and helps it remain manageable.

• Communications with parents, families or caregivers outside

of school is aligned with the communication through school-

based events, such as parent-teacher conferences, to ensure

there is a consistency in the communication that is based

around the progress achievement of jointly-set reading and

writing goals.

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Family & School Partnerships

Building Relationships

• Providing positive opportunities for families

to be meaningfully informed of their child’s

academic development

• Building the capacity of leaders and

teachers to grow and sustain effective family

engagement practices

• Creating open and welcoming environments

where all families feel valued

Linking Partnerships to Learning

• Sharing literacy data families and supporting

them in interpreting the information

• Helping families effectively engage in

supporting their child’s literacy goals

• Providing families with strategies, activities,

and resources that can be used at home to

enrich learning

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