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Richard C. Owen Publishers, Inc.
andThe Learning Network Listserve
Hosted a Free Online discussion
Exploring The Teaching and Learning Cycle
A key construct of The Learning Network
July 21, 22, and 23, 2008
with
Lenny Sánchez Kevin Shrum
Bloomington, Indiana Aurora, Colorado
MaryAnn Whitfield Geri Williams
Hutto, Texas White River Junction, Vermont

TRANSCRIPT
The postings listed below are not in the order in which they were received.For your
convenience, we have relocated the responses to questions so that they appear directly after the questions posed.
We hope you have enjoyed this discussion as much as we have and will join us in our
next discussion. /
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Online discussion about Exploring The Teaching and Learning Cycle, A key construct of The Learning Network, Transcript © 2008 by Richard C. Owen Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.
Permission is granted to print, copy, or transmit this transcript for personal use only, provided this entire copyright statement is included. This transcript, in part or in whole, may not otherwise be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electrical or mechanical, including inclusion in a book or article, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
1Richard Owen
Good evening folks,
Welcome to another scheduled conversation on TLN that focuses on current ideas about teaching and learning. We are delighted to have with us for the next three days Geri Williams, MaryAnn Whitfield, Lenny Sanchez, and Kevin Shrum.
All four of our guests have a long involvement with The Learning Network--as teachers who have had support, as teacher leaders (coaches) who have supported other teachers, as administrators who have been leaders in their building or district helping support change, and as coordinators responsible for training teacher leaders and supporting schools.
We are here this week to discuss the Teaching and Learning Cycle, a construct central to the work of teachers and teacher educators involved in The Learning Network. This conversation will investigate the elements of the teaching and learning cycle and will introduce examples from work with young children, work with secondary students, and work in professional development environments. If you did not read the document at the website that describes the T/L cycle, I encourage you to do it now. It is brief and barely scratches the surface, but it might prompt questions and thoughts you will want to share with the guests.
Good teaching, as we know, is not about programs that tell the teacher what to do, step-by-step. Good teaching is not about insuring that all learners are on the same page. Good teaching is not about passing a high stakes test. Good teaching involves providing the best possible support to help every learner become enthusiastic, confident, and successful. It requires professionals who can make judgments based on meaningful evidence that helps them determine what they will teach and how they will teach it. The teaching and learning cycle is a tool for the teacher, the school and district administrator, and the teacher educator to help her or him make professional decisions.
My request for our guests: I would like to get into this discussion by hearing you talk about your experiences with the T/L cycle--assessment, evaluation, planning, and teaching. Please talk to us about the circumstances, the audience, the frequency, the outcome, and any other consideration that comes to mind. You can talk about working with six year olds or 14 year olds or teachers or about watching coaches use the cycle in their work. Give us some insight into why you use the T/L cycle and how you use it. My hope is your comments will generate lots of questions and exchange with listserve members and prompt a lively discussion that will take us several layers into the elements of the teaching and learning cycle.
My thanks to Geri, MaryAnn, Lenny, and Kevin for agreeing to be with us. I know your schedules keep you busy and that your first response might not occur until Monday. Regardless, we are eager to hear your ideas, your thoughts, and your responses to subscriber comments and questions.
For all new subscribers: If you would like to reply to a listserve message, click reply. If you want to send a new message, click compose and address your message to . If you need to unsubscribe, please follow the directions at the bottom of each listserve message or write to me offlist at .
I look forward to an engaging conversation.
Richard
2Lenny Sanchez
Greetings All!
Thank you, Richard, for starting such a wonderful discussion on something that is so important for all of us to always keep in the forefront of our minds – the Teaching Learning Cycle. I believe you asked us to share about our experiences with the TLC. I thought that I’d first begin by sharing how I became “comfortable” with the TLC in my classroom. While the TLC is a construct that can be applied to multiple contexts, when I began to understand it most deeply was when I deliberately “tracked” my assessing, evaluating, planning, and teaching with a small group of students in my classroom. Being able to devote focused amounts of time on what just a small group of children were doing in my classroom helped me to better understand (and appreciate) how assessments can guide my instructional decisions. When I started teaching, I was familiar with the traditional relationship between planning and teaching. I understood that I needed to plan before I taught; however, it wasn’t until support from The Learning Network (and specifically help from Carolyn Matern who is a part of this listserve) when I began to truly understand the role assessment and evaluation also have in planning and teaching. As I learned about different ways to assess kids’ reading and writing and how to evaluate those assessments, that is when I believe the TLC impacted my teaching in even more ways. That is when I understood that a “simple” construct, such as the TLC, is not so easy after all, but impacts classroom practice in powerful ways.
Lenny
3 Geri Williams
Good morning,
Thank you Richard for arranging this wonderful dialogue centering on the Teaching Learning Cycle. This is a concept that is dear to my heart and I find myself using so automatically that it becomes a part of everything I do as an educator. The educational literature is full of articles and books on Differentiated Instruction. Many schools are trying to implement this concept. I work in several areas of the country and I see the attempts but rarely see the implementation. For me, the Teaching Learning Cycle is the missing piece.
It all starts with assessment. Whenever I walk intoa school, no matter my role, I am immediately taking an assessment sample. Are the hallways filled with work of students? Is it art work only or does it represent the learning in all content areas? Do the teachers here understand the importance of publishing work with noerrors? What is the role of the principal? Is she "too busy" to show me around the school? Where is the data for the school published? Can I see that this school is open to showing the public how they are doing? As I enter the classrooms, I am also taking an assessment sample. Does the classroom reflect the work of the children or is it filled with the latest Frank Schaffer from the Teacher Store? What are the students doing? Are they reading and writing and making mathematical discoveries. Are they sitting still in their seats and listening to an adult? Are they engaged? Then I talk to a student. Tell me what you are working on here. How did you happen to choose this book to read? What are you writing? Who decided what you would write?
In a few minutes time, I have gathered assessment samples. Then I start to evaluate "on the run." What do I see as the strengths of this child, this school, this classroom, this district? Where do I see some next steps for learning or talking or sharing? Then so what, what will I do about it? How will I plan for things to change? How do I use the data (the assessment sample) to take learners to their next level of learning?
Assessment is at the heart of everything we do in schools and it is often the neglected piece. How do you see this working for you? What are the challenges you face?
We look forward to a provocative three days!
Geri
4 MaryAnn Whitfield
Thank you, Richard, for organizing this discussion about the Teaching and Learning Cycle. I wanted to make a quick comment before going to work this morning. Right now one of the challenges teachers are dealing with is high stakes testing. I think as work with the data (assessment) from the tests we can get trapped in a mind set of summative assessment (assessment of learning).
The Teaching and Learning Cycle supports a teacher in understanding and organizing his or her thinking around the process of using assessment when planning for teaching. To do this I need to look at assessment that I've gathered or need to gather related to the learning targets that I'll be teaching. The assessment I use for planning is formative assessment (assessment for learning). I want current information about what the students already know and can do and what they are attempting.
For example, if summarizing is my learning target, I could ask students to summarize a paragraph or a short piece of text. I might ask them to write their summaries. I might ask them to summarize orally sharing with a partner, and I'll listen in as they share their summaries. From the information I gather, I'll decide what I need to do with my class, with small groups, and with individuals. I'll know what kind of support is needed, such as demonstrations, guided practice, and independent practice. As I teach, I'll continue to gather assessment that will help know how to adjust my support based on student need, how to group students, and how to select resources.
Before I was introduced to the Teaching and Learning Cycle, I would usually plan with little information about my learners and teach as though they all had the same needs. At that time assessing had more to do with testing and grading. Seeing the arrow on the TL/C that points from assessment/evaluation to planning has helped understand that knowing the needs of my students is a key part of the planning process.
It's off to work now. I look forward to the continued discussion for the next three days!
MaryAnn Whitfield
Instructional Coordinator
HuttoIndependentSchool District
5Toni
Some school districts seem to requiresummative assessments (assessment of learning) to gather data on students in their schools and across the district. Without knowing specifically what these assessments look like, would you say that it might be possible to use these in a formative way - as in assessing for learning - the TLC?
Toni
6 Lenny
Hi Toni,
One of the differences that I think about betweenthe use of formative assessments and summative assessments isthat summative assessments take place 'after' the learning and formative assessments take place 'during' the learning. In this way then, formative assessments impact right away what (and how) I'm teaching and what (and how) my students are learning. Because of this difference, I'm not sure thatdistrict summative assessments can serve the same purposeas whatmy classroom formative assessments can. The summative assessments can inform my instruction, butthey will most likely impact my teachingina muchdifferent way.For example,the district whereI firsttaught gave district reading tests every quarter. The information on those assessmentsdid not exactly reflect what I was doing in the classroom and Ionly received theresults of those assessments 4 times ayear. Because of those factors, I could notuse them to guide my instruction in the same ways as my dailyRunning Records, small group reading observations, and one-on-one reading conferences. While the district assessments might have been somewhat helpful to gather comparative data at specific points along the year, they played a much different role on the TLC than did my formative measures.
Lenny
7 Geri
I work with several schools that are using formative assessments that can become summative assessments. The first purpose is formative. What does this student understand and what does he need to learn next? Formative assessments such as student writing pieces can be used as summative assessments as well, with a focus. How many students are using details in their writing? How does the voice come through in these samples of student work? What do students understand about writing to a prompt? Running records are another way of formative assessments that can be used as summative assessments, as well. What does this whole class look like at this point in time as readers? What kind of errors are students making? At what levels are students reading? This kind of information can be the beginning of a constructive dialogue.
Geri
8Geri
I remember Peter Johnston's words many years ago, here in a conference in Vermont. Assessment is all about purpose. What does the superintendent need for information? What does the principal need? What does the teacher need? What does the child need? What does the parent need? What does the community need? What does the state need?
All of these purposes are legitimate. How can we efficiently gather useful information that serves different needs and purposes? I think the important thing for me to remember is that the assessment is FOR learning, no matter who the audience is. So, if I gather data, what do I do with it? That is where the Teaching Learning Cycle comes in. We need to take whatever assessment sample we have and evaluate it and then plan for new learning to occur, no matter who the audience is.
Geri
9 Dana
Hi MaryAnn,
How do you assess before planning with a curriculum like C-scope? Last year, I would introduce the lesson and then informally assess and direct my teaching that way. I am not sure with the pace of C-scope how that would look. Would you do this for every lesson? If so, with lesson plans being turned in a week ahead, there is a lot of rewriting of plans. I do use the TLC but I am not sure if I am really assessing first and then planning, or planning, teaching, assessing and re-teaching, or moving on quickly if students have gotten material.
For now,what I am trying to formulate is how this looks when doing lesson plans.
Dana Dillon :)
10 Deb
I know I'm not MaryAnn.... thinking aloud (my favorite pastime!) in this response...
For me I can't do lesson plans per se until I have figured out where each child is with regards to the content I think I'm supposed to teach. If they already know the stuff then what good does it do to teach it again (review ok but re-teach is too redundant) and if they don't know it then starting at a point other than where they are is just too frustrating for them and you. It begins to label them as not up to the task of learning when they are.
I can introduce a topic and begin to get them to show me what they know. Then I begin to structure lesson plans. Is this a hard and fast rule? Pretty much but it depends on the students I am teaching.
The format for the lesson plans is found in Reading Strategies: Focus on Comprehension 2/e (Goodman, Watson, & Burke) and a Richard Owen publication. These lesson plans do not look like traditional plans.
Again, food for thought or thinking aloud or ....
Deb
11MaryAnn
Hi Dana,
You have great questions about something that challenges all of us as we use our curriculum documents. Here are some thoughts about how the Teaching and Learning Cycle fits within the use of curriculum.
An important aspect of assessing for learning (formative assessment) is to know what students are expected to learn. Our state and district curriculum provides that information. Since we work in the same district, I know that our district's curriculum also lays out a scope and sequence of instruction for the year. So I'd start by looking at the current curriculum unit to see what concepts and key understandings the students are expected to learn (this would be the beginning of my medium term planning).
I'd be working with my team at this point to make sure we are clear about the learning targets for our students. Sometimes we discover that we need to seek help from other teachers, teacher leaders, and/or our administrator to clarify the learning expectation or to better understand the concepts in the unit. As teachers we're assessing our knowledge and skills and seeking support where we need to learn as part of our own teaching and learning cycle.