NORTH ADAMS PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Building Academic Language PD Series

Summary of Feedback from Session #3

(Elementary School Sessions Only)

Progress towards Mastery of Series Objectives

Are you able to…. / Little or no progress toward mastery / Some progress toward mastery / Significant progress towards mastery / Mastered
Session 1: Explain why there is an academic language gap linked to poverty / 0% / 31% / 45% / 24%
Session 1: Identify Tier 1,2, and 3 words in a text / 0% / 33% / 49% / 18%
Session 1: Explain the connection between increasing productive student talk and improving student learning / 0% / 20% / 63% / 16%
Session 2: Develop and use effective word walls and anchor charts / 2% / 41% / 35% / 14%
Session 2: Implement one or more best-practice techniques for teaching vocabulary / 2% / 41% / 39% / 14%
Session 2: Design high quality opportunities for student conversation (meaningful task, accountability, talk structure) / 2% / 43% / 37% / 18%
Session 3: Identify the FIVE CORE SKILLS for effective conversations in live conversations / 14% / 39% / 43% / 4%
Session 3: Design a lesson or series of lessons that builds one or more of these FIVE CORE SKILLS through a NEW TALK TECHNIQUE / 12% / 47% / 39% / 2%

2/3 to 4/5 of participants feel that have made significant progress or have mastered the three objectives from Session 1

About 1/2 of participants feelthat have made significant progress or have mastered the three objectives from Session 2

Quality Ratings

  • Quality of Instruction/Facilitation
  • 76% said ”good” (47%) or “very good” (29%)
  • Quality of Material
  • 59% said ”good” (35%) or “very good” (24%)
  • Quality of Activities
  • 67% said ”good” (39%) or “very good” (29%)
  • How likely to incorporate what was learned today into practice?
  • 90% said ”very likely” (57%) or “definitely” (33%)

Overall there was a substantially less positive response to the materials and activities in Session 3 than there was to the materials and activity in session 2. (Session 2 results were for both elementary and secondary levels, Session 3 for elementary only.)

Qualitative Feedback

  • 9 people commented positively on the inclusion of planning time and 1 person commented negatively. One person commented that more notice that the session would include planning time would have been helpful.
  • 6 people commented that they like the smaller groups, and 6 commented that they liked the grouping by content area/grade level
  • 2 people commented that the gallery walk, though interesting, didn’t really provide enough information to understand what people has done. More work samples/visuals would help.

Specific Comments to Consider

“ Workshops are fine for what they are, but is academic language really all that important? Perhaps we should have more workshops on trying to get to the root of why many students don’t wasn’t to do the work – how can we make curriculum more exciting? “

“It would be great to see more videos of classroom examples?”

“It would be helpful to have a list of all the techniques we’ve covered to improve academic language”

“I feel a lot of energy is put into our PD, but it doesn’t quite hit the needs of K-1. The fact that we all did the same thing show no differentiation for grade levels. I’m leaving knowing as much as when I came in.” (2-3 other people also commented that this is nothing new.)