GV BOCES School Improvement
December 2022 Newsletter
News You Can Use
Upcoming GV BOCES Featured Speakers
Dr. Paul Riccomini
Description: It is essential for students to acquire a deep understanding of foundational mathematical concepts and skills; yet, many students struggle with mathematical reasoning. This is an especially difficult area for many students including students with disabilities. The answer is sometimes as simple as analyzing the solution to a problem. This session will focus on a strategy that utilizes activities where students work with solved solutions to problems to help facilitate deeper understanding and reasoning.
Date: December 13, 2022
Intended Audience: Grades 4-12 General/Special Education Teachers; Instructional Coaches & Administrators
Dr. Lauren Lieberman
Dr. Lauren Lieberman is a Distinguished Service Professor at SUNY Brockport. She began her time at SUNY Brockport in 1995. Dr. Lieberman is a sign language specialist and has a particular focus on the area of Adapted Physical Education, and Universal Design in Physical Education. One of her specialties is working with children with sensory impairments. She also strives to assist schools by providing students with inclusive physical education opportunities.
Dr. Lieberman has written 23 books and published over 210 peer-reviewed articles. She was recently awarded a Global Fulbright Scholarship to start a new Camp Abilities in Ghana, Ireland, and in Brazil in the Fall of 2019. She was awarded the Herb Segal Visionary Award from the Olmsted Center in Buffalo. Her interests include hiking, camping, kayaking, mountain biking, guitar, ultimate frisbee, & pickleball.
Title of Session: Adapted Physical Education: Developing Quality Programming
Perry CSD & Genesee Valley BOCES will host Dr. Lauren Lieberman in an effort to support local school districts with ensuring the least restrictive environment and inclusive physical education (PE) opportunities. Dr. Lieberman will discuss how to create a robust Adapted PE program, curriculum development for Adapted PE, and how to work specifically with students with Autism in Adapted PE.
Date: January 30, 2023
Perry CSD Elementary School Auditorium
33 Watkins Avenue, Perry, NY 14530
Intended Audience: PreK - 12 Physical Education Teachers & Administrators
Performance-Based Learning & Assessment Networks (PLAN) Pilot
The Performance-Based Learning and Assessment Networks (PLAN) Pilot is exploring the potential for New York’s educational assessment strategy to be reimagined in a way that purposefully fosters high-quality instructional opportunities, provides authentic measures of deeper learning, and better prepares students for college and the workplace.NYSED’s PLAN Pilot Webinar Series provides information on performance-based learning and assessment.
The PLAN Pilot will be implemented using a phased, multi-year approach, which began with a planning year in 2021-22. NYSED will engage schools and educators across the state in professional learning experiences and outreach in the early phases of work to build statewide foundational knowledge of performance-based learning and assessment prior to launching an application process for schools interested in participating in the pilot. The pilot study will culminate with a report and policy recommendations in 2027.
NYSED’s Revised Social Emotional Learning Benchmarks
On Monday, November 14th, NYSED released revisions to its Social Emotional Learning Benchmarks for voluntary implementation. These revisions align the benchmarks with the agency’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Frameworks, as well as its Civic Readiness Initiative.
To develop these revisions, SED partnered with the national Center for the Improvement of Social-Emotional Learning and School Safety (CISELSS) and the Region 2 Comprehensive Center at WestEd. The content development group also included teachers, young people, administrators, parents, community school leaders, a representative from BOCES’ School/Curriculum Development Network’s SEL Framework group, experts in SEL including a representative from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), and NYSED staff leading work on Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education, Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion, Civic Readiness, Family & Community Engagement, and Special Education.
Continued Professional Learning
ELA Cohort: The [Writing] Revolution Continues
This past fall, both ELA cohort groups met to continue learning about the techniques embedded within The Writing Revolution (TWR). These sessions specifically addressed the implementation of a planning document, called the Single Paragraph Outline (SPO), within the writing process to facilitate student conceptualization and elaboration.
Each group started by revisiting the concept of a paragraph and the language of terms embedded within. Members recalibrated their knowledge that a paragraph is a group of sentences that: introduce a topic, connect relevant information, and describe a specific point or support a certain position. Most importantly, they (re)defined that a topic sentence and thesis statement are not the same thing! Furthermore, the discussion entertained how a claim statement can sometimes act as an appropriate topic sentence and what that would look like. After establishing a clear common language, the cohort moved to visualizing the structure of coherent paragraphs and establishing a definition. Participants revisited the notion that a paragraph is not just a collection of 3-5 sentences, but a highly specialized stream of writing that does integrate 3 components:
General Topic (aka “topic sentence” - T.S.)
Relevant Information (aka “supporting sentences” or “detail sentences” - D.S.)
Closing statement (aka “specific point,” “claim, or “thesis” - C.S.).
Once participants were able to recalibrate upon the concept, definition, and structure of a paragraph (and how it functions), they reflected on and investigated their own, current instructional tools. Many observed an irony existing within writing instruction, which is: the brain conceptualizes a finished writing piece as a linear progression of ideas, yet, all too often, the graphic organizers employed at the planning stage(s) do not lend themselves to students drafting a linear progression.
Hochman and Wexler (authors of TWR) go on to say, “Call them what you will - thought webs, brainstorming webs, bubble maps - these frequently used devices may be helpful for vocabulary instruction or helping students grasp certain concepts, but they don’t provide an effective template for transferring those ideas into a coherent piece of writing. A crucial step is missing: taking the material in the bubbles or boxes and figuring out what is most important, what is least important or irrelevant, and how to put the ideas and points in a logical [, linear] order” (p. 84). With this observation, participants identified the need for a linear writing scaffold, between the pre-planning and drafting stages. This is precisely where TWR comes to assist with the introduction of the SPO.
After becoming familiar with the SPO, participants discussed the impact and usage of such a scaffold. At this time, discussion focused around Torrance’s (2017) findings, which concluded, “[Students] who were required to write unordered notes, with no requirement to form sentences, then produced final text that contained many more ideas than texts produced by students whose prewriting task was to write structured outlines or grammatically correct sentences'' (p. 81). It was proposed that the integration of the SPO might be a viable scaffold to increase students' writing scores as a method to increase their elaboration.
By the end of the session, participants discussed and learned a variety of reasons to implement the SPO, which included:
It provides a linear scaffold between conceptualizing/comprehending content and drafting written text, within a planning construct.
The outline is easily replicable; students can generate their own on scratch paper (during assessments). Furthermore, it can be used for a variety of writing purposes (i.e. NYS Next Generation ELA Standards W1, W2, and W3).
It contains the correct components of a paragraph and provides structure (beginning, middle, and end).
The SPO helps students distinguish essential from non-essential info.
Helps establish relevance and coherence of claims and citations as students better understand the connection between T.S. and D.S.
Improves ability to “stick” to the topic.
Improves analytical thinking.
The structure helps eliminate repetition and aids in sequencing.
Ultimately, the SPO provides a structure for timely and efficient feedback from instructors/teachers with an easier structure for students to revise.
In all, participants identified a wide array of accurate usages for the Single Paragraph Outline. They also discussed the application of the SPO, which can be modified to be used with different genres or paragraph types and even across a variety of disciplines.
Participants also learned that they did not need to discard their current graphic organizers that help students comprehend and consolidate information, but that they should add a linear planning document/phase between students conceptualizing/comprehending and then their drafting, in order to achieve better elaboration.
School Improvement Spotlights
Introducing School Improvement Coordinator, Jessica Evershed
Jessica Evershed is excited to join the School Improvement Team as a Coordinator of Instructional Services. Prior to this role, Jessica had fourteen years of experience in the Greece Central School District, where she was a living environment teacher for thirteen years, an Acting Assistant Principal for one year, and Principal of the Credit Recovery Summer School for four years. At this location, Jessica also collaborated with science teachers to write curriculum, designed and implemented a plan to educate teachers on the Next Generation Science Standards, and completed data analyses of Regents exams for several years. In addition to science, Jessica is passionate about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) implementation as well as Social Emotional Learning (SEL) integration and has experience providing professional learning surrounding Culturally Responsive Education (CRE). At the building level, Jessica was a member of the Guardians of Equity Committee, Culture and Climate Committee, and supported the Science Department as Department Chair. School Improvement is thrilled to have Jessica on the team!
The Reading League Conference: Bringing The Science of Reading to Light
This past October, the Syracuse Chapter of The Reading League held their 6th annual conference. This year, they welcomed a record-breaking number of attendees and hosted over 40 break-out sessions with educational leaders. Dr. Shawn Anthony Robinson and Dr. Nicole Patton Terry both offered an opening address and keynote, respectively, to kick off the theme of: Bringing the Science of Reading to Light.
In her keynote address, Dr. Terry spoke extensively about creating Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) as the most effective way to promote and facilitate faculty learning and pedagogical shifts related to the Science of Learning.
Significant experience came from her assistance to Florida, public schools that housed staggeringly negative literacy statistics. In this setting, she learned that to create socially significant outcomes administrators needed to purposefully plan three metrics, including: selecting and implementing a particular evidence-based practice, establishing an effective implementation process, and finally creating an enabling context by sustaining a system of support (such as using a Plan, Do, Study, Act or Teacher Sprint model). She concluded her experience with several resounding reflections. First, decision-making needs to be based on verifiable evidence and secondly, we do not need to know everything about The Science of Reading in order to begin implementing components of what research has already concluded upon how the brain learns to read.
“Time” or “Coach”: Oakfield-Alabama Utilizes The Science of Reading
A small shift, with great impact:
This past October, a member of the School Improvement (SI) Team observed early elementary education and literacy lessons at Oakfield Alabama (OA) School District. Within the past few years, OA has worked diligently to embrace The Science of Reading (SoR) and has revised its curriculum accordingly. Aside from the resources that speak to this implementation, SI observed some amazing shifts, at the instructional level, that earnestly resonate and demonstrate the integration of the SoR. In first grade, when the teacher was working on conducting her MTSS/Tier 1 rounds, she started each group with a mini-lesson addressing a phonics/orthographic topic that connected to the previous phonological teaching sequence (from earlier that morning). From there, she employed different decodable texts that exemplified the previous lessons' content. Before reading, she reminded each student that while they read, if they struggled, they could state "time" or "coach" based on a personal assessment. Each child knew that they could enact more time to work on decoding the word or, if it felt too difficult, they could receive direct assistance (not the "answer") from the teacher. Through three rounds of small group instruction, each child present read every single word in their text chunk, by eliciting either of the two "lifelines". There was no guessing, no skipping, and no "reading" the pictures; there was however the emergence of young readers.
Follow School Improvement on Twitter
Don’t forget that you can follow the School Improvement Team (SIT) on Twitter. The team is often posting information about upcoming professional learning opportunities, educational resources, and strategies for the classroom. You can stay in tune with what is happening at Genesee Valley BOCES and the SIT by following #gvbocessit.
Location: 80 Munson Street, Le Roy, NY, USA