Looking at Student and Teacher Work Collaboratively
By: Pamela Brown
Publication:
The Voice, Vol. 8, No. 5
Date: 2003
Summary: Collaborative examination of student work samples and teacher assignments using a variety of protocols was the centerpiece of the June 2003 LETSWork Institute for the 32 teacher-consultants who participated...
"How can I tap into his love of illustration and help him apply it to his writing?" was the question posed by Mattie Davis of the Philadelphia Writing Project as she shared vivid paintings and brief written pieces from one of her first grade students. Careful examination of student work samples and teacher assignments was the foundation of the LETSWork Institute held in Berkeley, California, June 25–28, 2003.
LETSWork stands for "Learning Essentials from Teacher and Student Work," and the four-day institute was initially built around a three-year study of writing project teachers and student achievement conducted by the Academy for Educational Development (AED). Twenty-eight teacher-consultants teaching third and fourth grade in five states submitted student writing and teacher assignments to use in the study. Specifically, the institute was designed to investigate the tools teachers used in the AED study to look at student and teacher work.
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Participants at the LETSWork Institute included (left to right) Davena
Meadows Jackson (Red Cedar Writing Project, Michigan); Nancy Nankervis
(Oakland Writing Project, Michigan); Astra Cherry (Gateway Writing Project,
Missouri); Mitch Nobis (Red Cedar Writing Project); Rosalynde Scott (Gateway
Writing Project); Rita H. Heague (Oakland Writing Project); Mattie Davis
(Philadelphia Writing Project, Pennsylvania). |
Sponsored by the Teacher Inquiry Communities (TIC) Network, the LETSWork Institute
was "a logical way to use what we learned from the AED study about professional
development to enhance the ongoing work of teacher inquiry communities at local
writing project sites," asserted NWP Associate Director Marci Resnick.
She continued, "Teachers who participated [in the AED study], whether through
collecting student writing samples and teacher assignments or through attending
the scoring conferences, found the process to be deeply meaningful because it
provided a structure for teachers from across the country to carefully look
at, discuss, and learn from the work of students and teachers." Since there
are a variety of ways in which teachers systematically examine student work,
Marci Resnick and Shirley Brown, co-director of the TIC Network and coordinator
of the leadership team for LETSWork, designed the LETSWork Institute to focus
on reflective practice by having participants experience a number of ways in
which structured conversations support looking at and learning from the work
of classrooms—an idea that has been central to NWP from its very beginning.
Reflecting on practice, collaboratively using a variety of tools such as protocols, processes, and scoring guides, was the centerpiece of the LETSWork Institute for the 32 participating teacher-consultants who made up teams from 16 writing project sites. (See LETSWork Institute Participating Writing Project Sites.) Each participant received a copy of At the Heart of Teaching: A Guide to Reflective Practice by Grace Hall McEntee, et al, and each writing project site received a copy of The Power of Protocols: An Educator's Guide to Better Practice by Joseph P. McDonald, et al. Using these resources along with several articles about using protocols in teacher research, the teacher-consultants and members of the LETSWork leadership team engaged in using protocols to examine samples of student work brought to the institute by site teams.
Some of the tools explored during the LETSWork Institute included descriptive review, the collaborative assessment conference, the improvement rubric developed by the California Writing Project, the consultancy protocol, the shared reflection protocol, and the AED scoring guidelines for looking at teacher assignments using principles of authentic intellectual achievement. Each of these tools can be helpful to teacher-research groups whose research questions call for scrutinizing student writing.
There is sometimes a tension between following the guidelines for a structured conversation or way of looking at work and the open communi-cation and flowing ideas common to writing projects. But, as one participant noted, the formal demands of the protocols actually were freeing, enabling users to focus carefully on the process. This very focus resulted in more meaningful engagement with the student papers.
Teams from the 16 participating writing project sites have submitted action plans for taking what they learned at the LETSWork Institute back to their own teacher inquiry communities. Each action plan is tailored to the needs of the individual site, so that sites with extensive experience in inquiry and sites with little or no experience can decide independently what will be most useful in building leadership capacity through teacher research. As Linda Wharton and Emma Spencer of the Maryland Writing Project noted, "The idea of using protocols to reflect on teacher practice is not entirely new in Maryland, but certainly the variety of protocol options reviewed at LETSWork gives educators a more balanced understanding of why and how to explore teacher practice." For more information about LETSWork, contact Shirley Brown.
Online Resources for Learning More About Teacher Research and Protocols
Guidelines for Looking at Student Work
Networks, an online teacher research journal
Summaries of Inquiry Protocols
McDonald, J. P., N. Mohr, A. Dichter., and E. C. McDonald. (2003). The Power of Protocols: An Educator's Guide to Better Practice. New York: Teachers College Press.
McEntee, G. H., J. Appleby., J. Dowd, J. Grant, S. Hole, and P. Silva, with J. Check. (2003). At the Heart of Teaching: A Guide to Reflective Practice. New York: Teachers College Press.
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