Lauren Hughes

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Junior Block Spring 2016
#1 Learning Earnings
On Monday, April 11, 2016, the teachers at Tarrant Intermediate School had a
professional development meeting during their planning period while the students
were in physical education. The purpose of this meeting was to discuss learning
earnings for the upcoming ACT Aspire testing coming up at the end of the school
year. This event was one of the many opportunities that were available this
semester, but I specifically chose to attend because I felt that test preparation is an
area where I can grow knowledge and application wise.
The meeting started with a Chalkable speaker, Pep Booth, who discussed ACT
Aspire Growth Reports. She mentioned The PREP Act which mandates annual
evaluations for teachers and others and requires 25% of teacher evaluation to be
based on student growth as evidenced by test results. This act goes on the floor
again in front of legislation. It was particularly important for me to listen to this part
of the presentation because I will be directly affected by the outcome decision since
I am staying in Alabama to teach. Moving forward, we looked at various charts and
learned how to read the data collected by the ACT Aspire. This reminded me of
completing action research last semester. It was similar because we were studying
data and forming possibly hypothesis. It was different because action research was
completed in a class and these results were on a school-wide scale.
During this event, I gained knowledge about various strategies that I can use
to help my students prepare for testing at the end of the year. These strategies are
called learning earnings and they are intended to increase the motivation of the
students to do well on test such as ACT Aspire. Some learning earnings include

students pacing themselves and showing stamina in their work, students adhering
to the 5-minute waning plan, and students completing all constructed response
items. The teacher is supposed to observe them doing these things during the
testing period and award them learning earning credits as they correctly complete
each credit. After they get so many credits, they can cash them in for a prize such
as ice cream in the lunch room or sitting in the bean bag chair for a day. As I was
listening to this part of the event, I started to question how this procedure would
have worked in my elementary class when I was testing and how it would work in
my future classroom. I think it would have motivated my class to perform better on
the tests that we had to take and make the process seem more exciting than it was
at the time. In my future classroom, I think this could work well; however, I will
have to tweak it to fit computerized tests instead of paper and pencil tests. Overall,
this professional development opportunity was extremely enriching. It allowed me
to expand my test preparation schema and realize the value in motivation
strategies implemented by the teacher.

#2 Multiplicative OGAP
Gathering my thoughts to write this reflection made me realize how grateful I
am to have grown up in an environment where I was encouraged to be intentional in
everything: friendships, school work, faith, and more. This idea of being intentional,
or doing things with purpose, can be stretched to planning in life and as a teacher.
Meagan McCormick, the OGAP representative, led this professional development
opportunity on exactly that concept: being intentional in planning from the
beginning. This session was specifically an in-depth look at planning math content
from three standpoints including yearly, monthly, and weekly.

The first important aspect that a teacher should consider when planning
intentionally is glows versus grows of the previous year. This is a strategy that can
be used to process what went right (glows) and what needs improvement (grows).
As we were doing this, I thought back to all the strategies that we have learned in
this program thus far. I think glows versus grows would be a neat one to add to that
growing list of strategies to implement in my classroom one day. Students would be
more inclined to use glows versus grows because it sounds better than right versus
wrong.
After looking at glows versus grows, teachers should move to pacing their
content based on the relationship between critical areas and standards. Teachers
must remember that just because a standard is not in their critical areas, it does not
mean that they do not have to teach it. Some standards will be used as building
blocks to review from the previous year or prepare for the next year. This
conversation made me question how valuable standards are in planning. We have
learned through this program that standards are important and I have seen how
they are used to guide instruction; however, I saw this value through a different lens
as I watched teachers intentionally plan their content using standards. This process
took about two hours for them to plan a years worth of math content as they
placed standards to teach in certain months. Continuing through this process, the
presenter emphasized that every math problem that the students see should be in
the context of a word problem. At first, this caught me off guard, but then I started
to wonder what would happen if a teacher presented math content through word
problems instead of just worksheets with step by step problems. More classrooms
would be centered on conceptual understanding instead of just content. This takes
more planning on the teachers part, but it is worth it. If the students see that the

teacher is intentional in their planning and presenting, then they will be more
intentional in their learning especially conceptual learning.
Ms. McCormick presented educationally enriching material during this
informational session. Looking back over my experiences in school, I can recall
times as a student where I noticed that the teacher was not prepared for the days
lesson. I realize that this might happen once in a while, but it would be lessened if
teachers took the time to intentionally plan their whole year ahead of time. This
would provide a framework for the year based on critical areas as well as standards.
Once this framework is established, the teacher can move to preparing the
manipulatives, strategies, and extensions that could be used. As a preservice
teacher, I now see the importance of intentionally planning content at the end of
the school year for the upcoming year.