Differentiation & Cornerstone

Last week our campus hosted a Differentiated Instruction / Cornerstone Showcase for certain school leaders in our district.  Going through this process, along with a full day of reflection and planning with my instructional specialist counterparts guided by our Principal and Director of Instruction, has helped me realize how important our Cornerstone model is to my action research plan on differentiation.  

I’ve realized how imperative it is that I position our differentiation initiative within the Cornerstone framework that our school is focusing on for the next school year.  I need to show teachers that neither of these initiatives is going away.  One actually fits within the other.  Cornerstone is a framework that organizes everything that goes on in a school.  It will help lead us to make systematic decisions with the correct data, and it will help stakeholders understand how everything fits together on our campus.  Differentiated Instruction is a piece of that, and I’ve realized that focusing on differentiation independently of our Cornerstone model would be a mistake.  Using Cornerstone will help me show teachers where differentiation fits in our school.  It will help show them the type of data they should use to differentiate.  It will help them see where differentiation should play a role during their lesson planning process.  Teachers will see where differentiation can address specific skill deficiencies that some students will have.  This will lead teachers to value differentiation as a critical tool in their toolkit instead of “the next thing”.

Based on this realization, I have change action item 6 from my Action Research Plan that I posted last week.  The new action item is below.

6. Review how differentiated instruction strategies, electronic learning opportunities, and data (such as individual, group, and comparability data) fit into the Cornerstone framework.

H. Patel M. Welch (resource person)

May 23 – Aug 10, 2011

·   Cornerstone training manual ·   Cornerstone notes

·   Which of the four quadrants of the Cornerstone framework does differentiated instruction fall into? ·   How does it impact the other quadrants? ·   What kind of data can we gather in this process to base grouping decisions?

Action Research Plan

Goal: Making Differentiated Instruction a part of the math department culture.

Action Steps	Person (s) Responsible	Timeline: Start/End	Needed Resources	Evaluation
1. Review observation logs and lesson plans of all math teachers to determine the frequency of differentiated lessons	H. Patel	May 1 – June 1, 2011	·      Weekly Campus Content Instructional Specialist logs ·      Lesson Plans ·      Spreadsheet to collect data	·      How many lessons per week (on average) does each teacher differentiate part of their lesson? ·      How much of that lesson is differentiated?
2. Survey the department about what the obstacles to differentiating in their classroom are.  Include a self-assessment portion.	H. Patel	May 16 – June 6, 2011	·      Survey Monkey ·      Or other anonymous survey tool	·      Does the survey stay on point? ·      Does the survey lead them to answer certain ways or is it neutral? ·      Will the teachers actually do it?
3. Collect and analyze the data from the surveys.	H. Patel	May 17 – June 13, 2011	·      Spreadsheet to collect results of survey ·      b	·      What are the obstacles listed? ·      Are the obstacles within our control? ·      How do they rate themselves compared to what the data from Step 1 indicates? ·      How do the opinions of the “high” rated teachers differ from the “low”?
4. Gather information regarding electronic learning resources available for teachers in the classroom.	H. Patel K. Sodolak (resource person) K. Massie (resource person)	March 14 – June 6, 2011	·      Open Internet resources ·      Software purchased by district ·      Software purchased by school	·      Do we currently have access to these resources? ·      Are any being utilized right now? ·      Where would I go for more information on these resources?
5. Analyze the usefulness of each electronic resource.	H. Patel	March 14 – June 15, 2011	·      Open Internet resources ·      Software purchased by district ·      Software purchased by school	·      How easy is the resource for students to use? ·      How easy is the resource for teachers to use? ·      How customizable is it? ·      What learner skills is each resource best for? ·      What are other strengths / weaknesses?
6. Review how each of the above topics fit into the Cornerstone framework.	H. Patel M. Welch (resource person)	May 23 – Aug 10, 2011	·      Cornerstone training manual ·      Cornerstone notes	·      Which of the four quadrants of the Cornerstone framework do each of the above topics fall into? ·      How do they impact the other quadrants? ·      How can these resources impact our four areas of data collection?
7. Analyze the students’ role in this overall system.	H. Patel	May 23 – Aug 10, 2011	·      Student observations ·      Student conversations	·      Which parts of this plan do the students play a role in? ·      How can the students play an active role in their own learning?
8. Summarize conclusions from the study.	H. Patel	Jun 6 – Aug 10, 2011	·      Blog ·      Weekly Campus Content Instructional Specialist logs	·      How does each area studied impact the goal? ·      What are the factors that we can control?
9. Propose an action plan for the math department considering specific campus circumstances.	H. Patel	Aug 10, 2011 – Oct 10, 2011	·      Agenda for opening department meeting of 2011-2012 year ·      New lesson plan model centered around DI through the Cornerstone model	·      What level of support will be provided? ·      What level of differentiation will be expected? ·      What resources will be provided?
10. Monitor the progress of each teacher in the implementation of differentiated instruction.  Provide feedback and reflect with the teachers during this process.	H. Patel	Oct 10, 2011 – June 3, 2012	·      Blog ·      Weekly Campus Content Instructional Specialist logs ·      Video of lessons ·      Pre & Post conference forms ·      Teacher action plans ·      Lesson plans	·      Have the math teachers grown in their willingness and ability to implement differentiated instruction lessons? ·      How often does the team plan lessons with differentiated instruction in mind without prompting?

Nine passions for inquiry wonderings

This week broke down nine different areas (passions) that inquiry wonderings may come from.  They are:

1. Staff development

2. Curriculum development

3. Individual teacher(s)

4. Individual student(s)

5. School culture/community

6. Leadership

7. Management

8. School performance

9. Social justice or equity issues

I’m not sure which one of these my inquiry, “How can I, as an instructional specialist, help teachers more effectively implement the strategies of differentiated instruction in their classrooms?” would fall into.  As I go deeper into the inquiry I’m sure I’ll find that it will overlap with all of the first six passions as well as school performance.

A side note to my action research plan is that we are implementing a Cornerstone model (Plato Learning, 2010) into our school.  This will help frame everything that occurs in our school.  I’ve discussed this with my principal, and we decided that my project on DI should be framed with Cornerstone, so that common vocabulary and concepts are used.  This will help teachers during the implementation process.  This should not be seen as anything new.  Continuity of programs, vocabulary, etc help make things seem more like “the next step” instead of “a new path altogether”.

Also, in this inquiry around DI, I will look at how all of our electronic learning resources (PLATO Learning Environment, ST Math, Fastt Math, Study Island, and Smart Tech’s Smart Response equipment) can play a part in making it easier for teachers to implement DI correctly and effectively.

Action Research Project - Problem & Questions

The problem I’ve identified for my action research project on my campus is:

Not enough teachers are implementing differentiated instruction to benefit their students’ varied needs.

The questions that I would pose to answer in my action research project are:

How can I help foster a culture of differentiated instruction on my campus?
How can teachers more effectively implement the strategies of differentiated instruction in their classrooms?
How can the students play a role in the process? (Take ownership in their own learning.)

What I've learned about action research

What I've learned about action research:

Action research is not meant to just study a situation or just to publish results for others to read about.  Action research is meant to bring about change.  Once we identify a problem, we can put the wheels in motion, in a systematic way, to solve that problem.  One of the items that spoke to me the most this week was Nancy Fichtman Dana’s comment about what normally comes to mind when we hear the word “research”.  We think of a scientific controlled setting that is void of external variables that could contaminate the results (Fichtman, 2009).  In the action research setting we consider all of the variables that exist in the situation.  After all, each student, teacher, and administrator come in with their own set of variables which contribute to the overall school climate.  The process of addressing the problem starts with asking some clarifying questions.  To answer those questions, we must gather quantitative and qualitative data from various means.  At this point reflection is key, and that is where the problem, the questions, and the data must be revisited to possibly modify the inquiry and go through the cycle again.  This process will bring about some of the best long-term solutions for our specific school.

How I might be able to use it:

I can use action research to identify some of the obstacles to differentiated instruction in my school.  We are nearing the end of our second year of training on differentiated instruction, but it does not seem to be a normal practice in most classrooms.  Action research can help me systematically identify some of the problems and solutions.

How educators might use blogs :

I’m looking forward to using this blog to capture my thoughts on my action research project.  As I collect data, I can reflect on what it means using this blog.  As I develop relationships with other educators, we can share our feedback on each other’s blogs and benefit from the insight of others.  The problems of our school must be solved by the people who work within the schoolhouse walls but not without the help of others.  The community must be involved, and in today’s world our community has become much larger.  As educators, our community stretches across schools, districts, states, and even countries.  That is a powerful pool of knowledge to draw from.

Reference

Fichtman, N. (2009). Leading with passion and knowledge: the principal as action researcher. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.