One of the steps in the Teacher’s College workshop process is called “Active Engagement.” This phase of the minilesson is one I think deserves more detailed thought and understanding by teachers new to workshop teaching. First of all, active engagement comes after the connection and the teaching of the strategy. It is the moment in the lesson when students actually try out what you’ve just taught. Sounds simple enough right? However, I think it is important to note how this step allows you to do 2 things:

1. Informal Assessment. As students practice, you should be actively moving about the kids assessing where they are with the work. Can they do this? Did your lesson make it clear? Are there a few who still seem confused? Of course, assessing during turn and talk or another whole group moment is an art in itself, but the active engagement phase gives you an incredible opportunity to listen and watch your students.
2. See your teaching articulated. Because every student tries the strategy you’ve just taught, you can see your teaching being “used.”

Many teachers new to this approach are confused by the notion that they will teach a minilesson, but then the students might not be working on what was just taught when they head off for independent practice. The idea instead should be (on most days-of course there are exceptions) you teach a strategy, everyone tries it during the active engagement phase, then those who are ready to use the strategy do so, when they move away to write. As you conference around the room you can ask specific students to use the strategy if you believe it will lift the level of their writing.

Active engagement is an important part of a strong minilesson. Take the time to cultive it in your classroom.

In preparation for our DRA Data meeting tomorrow, the Curriculum Director at my school took our DRA information (from the Class Profile and the Class Focus for Instruction pages) and plugged them into first, an Excel spreadsheet and then into a Tinker Plot. Here is an example:

(This is of course just a sample plot and not a picture of real data.)

Although I’m really new at this tool, I think the possibilities are endless. During the meeting on Wednesday we will only be looking at Spring DRA2 text level data. However, based on the information collected, we could ask the Tinker to show us gender distribution on levels and group students based on when they enrolled at our school (to help lend credibility to statements like: boys don’t like/aren’t good at reading and our new screening process isn’t working.) Plus we can correlate our DRA data and Tinkers to our MAP standardized test data and classroom based assessments. Over time we could even create Tinkers for individual and/or groups of students. WOW!

If you have experience with Tinker Plots and can offer advice, I’m listening.

We are busy in our 2-week window administering the DRA2. Teachers are working hard to find that all important “Indepedent with Instructional Needs” level for each child. On Wednesday, May 19th we will have a K-5 DRA Data Meeting to analyze our results. The meeting will allow us to see Grade Level trends as well as highlight some important “you should be aware of this” information for the next grade level. You can access our updated ACS DRA Guidelines next week on Scribd. (I’ll write a post after our meeting.)

This has been an interesting journey. I feel like I know the DRA inside and out. The beauty is after all these years I am finally understanding the use and the power of this tool.

Today my friend Alison emailed me thinking that she might set up a bulletin board display with student LEADS posted. I think this is a great idea for the following reasons:

• My belief is that student work does NOT need to be error free or perfect to be displayed. (If it is then more than likely it is really the teacher’s work.)
• That said, I think it is appropriate to qualify your display to explain to kids, parents and other teachers what it is they are looking at and why. Often I display what I call “Process Pieces” and I title the learning board something like

1. “We are learning how to DRAFT!”
2. “Process Pieces- This work is still in process”
3. “When You’re Done You’ve Just Begun!”

• Along those lines- you might ask the kids to develop the title or explanation of what they did in the pieces you are going to display. A great use of technology here is to have students use programs like Voicethread or Jing to record their explanations. This makes a much more useful artifact than simply having a teacher-corrected published piece.

I love to think of bulletin boards as teaching tools rather than as display- more like a canvas than a framed piece of art. Ideally they should be student generated or created and should be USED by the kids to help them learn and reflect. For the outside world- learning boards can a window into the real work, or heavy lifting, being done by learners in the classroom. If all we ever show is perfection at the end of the learning, it is hard to appreciate and learn from all the effort that went into the work.

Over the past few months, a group of teacher representatives from grades K-3 and I have been working on organizing, modifying and capturing our use of the DRA2 as a school-wide assessment tool. The work started after a visit from Lenore Levy from Pearson, who offered suggestions to help us better use the data from the DRA2 to impact our teaching and to track student learning.

Lenore’s ideas, coupled with the fact that we were using the wrong version of the Blackline Masters and the Teacher’s Guides* forced us to pause and reorganize our use of the DRA2.

Beginning next week, we will now have a K-3 DRA2 testing window on the calendar with a follow up day for analyzing the data. (We have access to a trial of the DRA2 Online Management System- but haven’t decided to purchase it it yet.) This simple structure will allow us time to reflect on our students’ scores and the instructional strategies we could use to help them as readers.

Because we are working through all of this info and learned from other schools and their documents, I’ve uploaded our DRA2 Guidelines, DRA/PM Cycle and the Worksheet we used to with the staff when we presented all of this in April. Below is the Powerpoint presentation. If you use these documents or have a comment/suggestion which could help us impact our teaching and learning in this area- please let me know.

DRA Staff Training April

*Warning: Our school purchased the new DRA2 kits over a year ago. At somepoint between getting the new kits and the time I began working here- a CD was sent out by the company with “updated” pages for the Blackline Masters and the Teacher’s Guide. Because the extent of the update wasn’t clearly communicated, the CD was put into kits and ignored. When we finally looked at the CD and compared it to the guides- there were over 300 pages which needed to be changed. Without the funds (or the time) to print a new copy of everything for everyone- we’ve scrambled and are now sharing resources. However, I’m disappointed that Pearson failed to indicate on their CD how extensive the changes were. (And failed to send us all new printed and bound guides. We paid for these kits, the mistake was on their end and was of such an extent, it almost rendered the original kit unusable.) If you are using the DRA2 and haven’t looked at the updated CD, my recommendation: do it now.