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Student Work Protocol with Text and Task Analysis

Two Protocols for Looking at Student Work

When teams sit down to look at student work together, they often use protocols that structure the time for sharing student work and engaging in evidence‐based discussion. Protocols can be helpful for keeping the expectations for students clear, the evidence of their performance documented (rather than intuited), and implications for lesson planning more evident. The two protocols that follow incorporate specific Reading Apprenticeship tools. One includes Text and Task Analysis for deepening teachers’ understanding of what the student work may show, and the other pulls on the Reading Apprenticeship Student Learning Goals for considering how the student work may reflect or suggest specific areas of growth.

Looking at Student Work with Text and Task Analysis

Teams have many reasons for looking closely at student work, but regardless of what they may be, a Text and Task Analysis makes the process more meaningful. For teachers to fully appreciate the work students are accomplishing with assigned texts and tasks, they must first do this same work themselves. (Chapter Five includes a description of using the Text and Task Analysis routine in lesson planning.) Understanding the demands of the assignment, teachers can then better understand how the assignment contributed, in ways both helpful and not, to students’ thinking and accomplishment of the intended learning.

After analyzing the text and task, teams then examine samples of student work from that assignment. Team members collect evidence of what they see in a piece of student work and describe what they infer as a result. When the evidence is out on the table, other ideas, conjectures, and possibilities can arise from the resulting collegial conversation. Such conversations are likely to expand teachers’ thinking about the work at hand and spill into evidence‐based exploration of implications for teaching and learning. Team Tool 6.14, Student Work Protocol with Text and Task Analysis, lays out a structure for learning from student work in this way.

At Chabot College, faculty in the Reading Apprenticeship FIGs made it a habit to bring in texts that were a struggle for students and to try and figure out why. Instructor Cindy Hicks reports that participating faculty used students’ written metacognitive conversations about the texts, as well. A biology teacher, for example, asked her students to focus their metacognitive logs on challenges in the reading, so in addition to the text, she brought in students’ logs, which provided some concrete evidence about what in the text was causing confusion and how students were working to make sense of it.

Looking at Student Work Through the Lens of Student Learning Goals

During some meetings, to teams want to spread their attention across student work samples from every team member. Reading Apprenticeship Student Learning Goals (Appendix C) can provide a common focus. In a gallery format, team members respond to what each sample seems to reveal—about a student’s relationship to particular learning goals and the support provided by the assignment. Team Tool 6.15, Student Work and Student Learning Goals Protocol, is designed to allow everyone to get and give feedback and to gain insights from colleagues’ implementation of Reading Apprenticeship.

Looking for Growth

It is common for teachers to think of student work in terms of culminating tasks they have assigned—the essays, speeches, reports, and tests that offer a gauge of students’ grasp of course content. When Reading Apprenticeship teams focus on student work, it is in terms of helping students embrace the challenge of complex texts, solve problems of comprehension, reason more productively in distinct disciplinary traditions, and use texts intentionally to learn something new. What kinds of student work can help teams recognize how students are taking on these new dispositions and practices, and how they are growing as learners? Team Tool 6.16, What Counts as Student Work, gives examples of the kinds of student work that can provide information on learning targets of interest.

PURPOSE

Time spent looking closely at student work should be preceded by time spent doing the work—and analyzing its challenges!

PROCEDURE: Forty Minutes

  1. Presenter Describes the Task or Learning Experience: Five minutes

    Without distributing any student work samples, the presenting teacher passes out copies of the assignment and the text students read. The teacher provides some background on the instructional context and briefly explains the learning experience. For example:

    • Where does this assignment fit into the course? Is it part of a thematic unit? Is it an ongoing classroom routine? How does it connect with topics that precede and follow it? What was the sequence of learning activities?
    • What should students learn and know how to do as a result of this learning opportunity? What were you hoping to see as quality work? How would students know the criteria for quality work?
    • What materials were students given to work with? What were students asked to do with them?
    • For each part of the assignment, how were students grouped? What was their task? What was your role?
    • In what ways were students called on to be metacognitive?
    • What were the outcomes for students? What evidence do you have?

    Team members listen and take notes.

  2. Team Members Analyze the Task: Ten minutes

    Team members complete the task (or some part of it) with a Text and Task Analysis note taker and talk about what is involved. They do not yet look at student work. Some points to address in the discussion:

    • What reading or content area knowledge and strategies does the student need to accomplish this task?
    • What other knowledge or strategies does the student need (e.g., the ability to participate effectively in small group discussion, to collaborate on a project, to provide feedback on another’s work)?

    Presenter listens and takes notes.

  3. Team Members Look Closely at Samples of Student Work and Discuss: Fifteen minutes

    The presenting teacher distributes copies of the student work from no more than three students. All team members, including the presenting teacher, spend some time individually reading the student samples and making Evidence/Interpretation notes (see following note taker) about what they are seeing and what they think it means or makes them wonder.

    The team discusses their observations. This step is not a planning or problem‐solving session. The purpose is to support all group members’ learning from looking at student work samples. Some points to address:

    • What, if anything, is surprising or unexpected in this student work?
    • What can we learn about the student’s reading or subject area learning from this work sample—what schema and strategies is the student bringing to this task?
    • Where are there opportunities for metacognitive conversation?
    • In what ways does the student’s work satisfy the assignment, given the teacher’s goals?
    • What additional instructional support might the student need to do better on this task?

    Presenter will respond to team members’ observations after this discussion but participates here as may be necessary. Presenter takes notes.

  4. Presenter Responds and with Team Members Brainstorms Next Steps: Five minutes

    If desired, the presenter addresses some of the team’s observations. Together, presenter and other team members brainstorm next steps for this assignment in light of their discussions and feedback.

  5. Reflection:Five minutes

    All team members write individually in response to one or more of the following questions:

    • What are some instructional implications you can see for Reading Apprenticeship from this inquiry into student work?
    • What did you learn about engaging in a collaborative conversation about student work with colleagues?
    • In what ways did this inquiry process offer a window into the student’s world? A mirror that reflects on teaching? A lens that focuses on equity and achievement?

    Team members share their responses.

TEXT AND TASK ANALYSIS NOTETAKER

EVIDENCE/INTERPRETATION NOTETAKER

DMU Timestamp: July 13, 2018 16:17





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