Puzzle of Practice
Sanford B. Dole Middle School has been on the Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) list for multiple years and the team wanted to strengthen agency with their learners by teaching them how to engage in goal-directed practice.
Collective Goal
The school decided that the best way to impact learning and outcomes in ELA, math, and science was to focus on developing student self-empowerment by fostering self-efficacy through the power of deliberate practice (.79 Effect Size, Visible Learning).
Deliberate practice (DP), as defined by Anders Ericsson, involves learning experiences specifically designed to improve performance, often characterized by tasks just beyond one’s current abilities or zone of proximal development (ZPD). DP requires significant effort and is not always inherently enjoyable because goal-directed practice is hard work. Deliberate practice demands focused attention and repeated practice infused with feedback and reflection. Deliberate practice is something that students can employ on their own – anytime and anywhere – if they want to build expertise.
While student self-empowerment was the end goal, it became evident that teacher self-empowerment was a first step to creating a culture of collective efficacy. With this in mind, teachers and leaders set the intention to develop a structure in which teachers could focus on small goals and gain momentum through deliberate practice.
Collective Action
The Dole Middle teams worked through the steps below to develop and spread expertise from within.
- The entire faculty co-created expectations for a self-empowered learner at Sanford B. Dole Middle School.
- The school participated in foundational professional learning to prepare them to implement the formative assessment process (learning intentions, success criteria, self-peer assessment, goal setting, reflection) with students.
- The school engaged in professional learning supporting teacher and student clarity by building common understanding and language around prioritizing standards and unpacking standards across all courses. They then co-constructed criterion-based formative tasks in partnership with students anchored so students could engage in deliberate practice.
- The ELA & math departments received further professional learning on how to use the i-Ready diagnostic assessment and resources for instructional support including goal setting.
- The faculty co-constructed clear expectations to engage in quality deliberate practice within their allotted intervention/i-Ready time and throughout the day and at home. They co-constructed “deliberate practice” expectations for students and teachers so everyone was on the same page. Dole’s PLCs used the Impact Teams Check-In protocol to monitor students’ progress while monitoring their goals.
- Teams collaborated using the Impact Team Analysis of Evidence (AOE), Calibration, and Check-In protocols to ensure students were making progress.
- Dole leaders met regularly with departments to support Impact Team Facilitators to ensure a focus on building quality relationships and to support facilitators at their point of need.
- Instructional coaching increased clarity as teams revised priority standards and tasks to support those standards, co-constructed more specific, readable learning targets, and focused/decreased the number of success criteria in a task.
Collective Impact
With guidance and support, Impact Teams-PLCs developed and implemented a plan for their intervention/i-Ready classes to incorporate deliberate practice and engage learners in the process of evaluating and reflecting upon their own learning. In addition, Impact Teams have built transferable, common formative assessments which include success criteria to support self- and peer assessment, reflection, and goal setting.
Teachers’ self-reflections on what they had learned and how they had developed after the year of partnership included:
- being more aware of the assessments they are giving and to what extent they measure students’ mastery of the standards on grade level,
- the importance of student-friendly success criteria for their both teacher and student clarity,
- how to use success criteria as well as a tool for students to self-reflect on their learning, and
- how aligning assessments to specific and focused learning targets enabled teachers and students to set goals, monitor progress, and adapt.
Their focused plan, anchored in shared decision making, had a positive impact on developing collaborative expertise focused on strategies that get the most impact.
- 4 % overall gains in proficiency in mathematics
- 8% overall gains in proficiency in ELA
- 12% overall gains in science
- 6 year WASC accreditation
Let’s celebrate Dole Middle School and the impact they made in partnership with their students!