SUMMARY NOTES FROM EQUITY WALK December 2, 2013

Strengths: Many strategies for management Positive teacher language

Noticings: Morning meetings being used with rituals and routines to establish culture of the classroom Calling kids by names Using a Whip-share Agenda for day is posted Specific feedback given in 3/5 classrooms Higher order questions posed in 1/5 classrooms and then a turn and talk was used Two classrooms had high interest texts One classroom had a visual of close reading what does it look like, how do to it Students explaining thinking and response Special ed stop and think strategy very explicit rituals and routines A lot of partner work 4/6 classrooms Partnering work varied from class to class what partner worked looked like Kids interacting with promethean board Two classrooms used movement to increase behavior and engagement Thumbs up to check in on understanding, vocab, agreement etc. Choice are you going to work alone or with a partner, Where to work 1 room 2/6 rooms had pacing or lesson structure that was tight no loss of instructional time Many students smiling Clear rituals and routines students know where they are going in transitions During large group discussions teachers called on students who had their hands up 2/6 teachers intentionally used wait time when calling on students 2/6 had posted learning target 1 read and referred to the learning target 3/6 rooms had large group discussion and teachers called on students of color as much as they called on white students if not more Most classrooms used some manipulative to focus the learning book, ruler, chart paper

1/6 used calling specific student names to get their attention and manage them 2/6 classrooms used questioning to have all students respond and then all student had to raise hands to indicate if it was true for them or not 3/6 classrooms learning was connected to other content 3/6 used volunteer and non-volunteer students some had strategies for this , others just did it Visuals in every classroom to support the learning re-direction in one classroom strategies for what to do when you are frustrated In full classroom teachers circulated, engaged, supported more students than in small group

Wonderings: How many students can articulate the purpose for what they are doing Are students engaged in goal setting before work? Tests? Where is the rigorous cognitive task? What is the evidence? How much to scaffold the text versus have kids engage in it alone first How can we support third grade? Whats posted and who is using it? Resources, learning targets, posters, word walls etc. Do students know the purpose of routines? Why we have them? Why we do them? Has sharing/partnering been taught? Does it need to be consistent across classes? A/B, turn and talk, What do we want partnerships to look and sound like, how are we supporting them to increase engagement how are students in partnerships or small groups held accountable to work in production, what are some other strategies for how to engage student to student talk How could academic language/sentence stems be intentionally taught as a support to learning How could structured student interactions be included as part of the daily lesson How could teachers include formative assessments to know if kids had learned What is the level of implementation of turn and talk to make all kids accountable? How could (task, skill and content) alignment in Core and support services accelerate what kids are being expected to do? How can we be explicit about the purpose of what we are doing in every aspect

Intentional and purposeful alignment to our identified essential learning