Puzzle of Practice
Many of the students have been struggling to perform on grade level literacy and teachers were working hard but not seeing the impact they expected.
Collective Goal
This dual language school partnered with Dr. Paul Bloomberg, Rachel Carrillo Fairchild, and Isaac Wells to create and implement a plan for literacy success, especially for multilingual learners.
Collective Action
Together they:
- refocused and revised their curriculum
- implemented a dedicated English Language Development (ELD) time
- established clear structures, tasks, and instruction for intervention including frequent progress monitoring focused on prioritized skills,
- implemented high-yield instructional strategies for both foundational skills and reading comprehension,
- have taken ownership of their PLC process by meeting regularly as Impact Teams to analyze student work and teacher impact on learning and adjust instruction as needed,
- developing common formative assessment across monolingual and dual language classrooms in grade-level teams, even as dual language teachers are adopting a new literacy program,
- revised their testing plan to address the social and emotional needs of students making adjustments such as allowing students who may feel shy about their language ability to take their speaking assessment with an adult they have a relationship with in a comfortable setting, and
- three grade levels (so far!) are working after school with the support of their learning facilitators (instructional coaches) to create and revise a year-long series of literacy units anchored in focus standards and high-impact practices.
Collective Impact
Among the outcomes they are celebrating are:
- Reclassifying or exiting more multilingual students than ever before at the site and even outperforming schools in the area,
- Meeting NWEA MAP growth goals for literacy
- 84% of first graders making at least one year’s growth in reading foundational skills.
- Moving 91% of 3rd grade and 80% of 4th grade students up or out of their Tier 3 intervention groups.
- Identifying 100 students, based on their current data, who are close to exiting their language program as they look ahead to WIDA testing in February.