Roots Data Analysis Reflection Template
Roots has their teachers reflect on their practices using this template.
August 9, 2016
Craft Category: Artifacts
Teacher Discusses Use of Data Analysis Reflection Template at Roots
Roots teacher, Mackenzie Wagner, shares how she uses a data reflection template to inform her instructional planning.
Transcript: Mackenzie Wagner: As it is now, it’s basically a form that helps us figure out what to do next. It guides us in instructional planning. And so, it outlines: who are the highest kids in the grade level right now in your content area? Who are the lowest? What specific standards are holding kids back? What standards do kids make the most growth on so that you can use that data to form small groups and also content instruction over the course of the next six weeks or so before the next assessment round.
August 9, 2016
Roots Executive Director Provides Overview of Utilizing NWEA MAP
Roots ED and Founder, Jonathan Hanover, discusses how the team uses NWEA’s MAP assessment to understand how the school is doing compared to others nationally.
Transcript: Jon Hanover: We take the NWEA MAP fall, winter, spring, and that’s kind of our like – all right, like, how are we doing compared to other schools metric. You know, the assessments that we use in-house for those kind of six to eight week cycles, we built them ourselves. Which are great, and it gives us the data that we need instructionally, but it doesn’t give us – especially as we’re in our first year and don’t really – haven’t really benchmarked them yet. It doesn’t give us a great picture of how we’re doing compared to other schools, and that’s what we use math for, is to say – all right, we know – I don’t know, thousands of schools that use math. So we can see kind of how our kids are performing versus other kids.
August 9, 2016
Roots Writing Data Workbook Data Entry
This is an example Data Entry workbook for a student at Roots and shows the plethora of data collected for each student.
August 9, 2016
Roots Teacher Discusses STEP Testing and Informal Data Use at Roots
Roots teacher, Samantha Gambino, discusses how the team uses STEP testing to inform literacy instruction.
Transcript: Samantha Gambino: So, a lot of our data is done through – we do what’s called step testing, which is a literacy test that does comprehension and phonics. But also, a lot of informal data is done through our small groups. So when I’m speaking, conferencing with kids, I’ll be making notes on like, do you need help with one-to-one pointing, or do you need help with like, a phonics skill like beginning sounds? And so I make notes of that. I also conference with my other partner, Ms. Wagner, who’s the writing teacher to see like, where are their gaps in learning from reading to writing so that we can target those skills specifically for scholars through the data that we’ve collected.
August 9, 2016
Roots Executive Director Discusses Flexible Instruction through Data Use
Roots ED and Founder, Jonathan Hanover, discusses how Roots uses data to create long term learning plans as well as adjust near-daily to inform groupings.
Transcript: Jon Hanover: – one of the things that’s really unique about our model is that we have the ability to strategically form and reform groups throughout the day, which means we’re not stuck in a trap of having to either be completely heterogeneous and random as far as how kids are grouped together. And, we don’t have to be purely homogeneous or tracked, right? It gives us the flexibility to have the right kind of group formation for the right kind of content. We also use data along the way and between cycles to either make adjustments to some of those groups, to schedule additional pull outs. For instance, our math teacher will often notice that these five kids are struggling with this or these ten kids didn’t get this in my lesson today and so will schedule them for remediation the next day.
August 9, 2016
Roots Student Learning Standards
Roots learning standards are content standards unpacked into learning objectives they want each student to meet.
August 9, 2016
Teacher Discusses Student Choice at Roots
Roots teacher, Samantha Gambino, explains how choice is integrated into the student day, particularly during independent learning time.
Transcript: Samantha Gambino: say okay, we have these four authors. Let’s all choose which author we all as a group want to be learning about and we want to talk about. For example, we did Dr. Seuss a few months back, and it was overwhelmingly, the kids wanted to do Dr. Seuss. There were a couple of a scholars who were like, you know, we don’t really want to do Dr. Seuss. So the next unit they were able to choose more so like, what the unit would be. And then, student choice is really strong in the grove, I think, because they get to choose a lot of their playlist. So their playlist is where they go to each station. And the coaches do one-on-one conversations with them, and they say, how are you feeling about your playlist? Where would you like to go more? And scholars will say oh, I need to go to the iPad center more ’cause I want to work on my reading app. And so, that’s where they get a lot of choices more so in the grove, less so in the whole group classrooms.
August 9, 2016
Teacher Discusses Personalized Learning Experiences at Roots
Roots teacher, Megan Miles, explains how rotations through different activities are personalized to student need and choice.
Transcript: Megan Miles: when they’re in the grove, each kid has a different grove schedule. So they’re the same activities, more or less, that the kids are doing, but they might be doing – one kid might be going to the flex center and doing a specially designed activity just for them. Another kid may be spending two rotations in the library because they really want to practice their reading, or they like just staying in the library a little bit longer. It helps them calm down – feel calm. Other kids are going from like, iPad, to library, to writing to iPad, to flex, to maker’s – ’cause they need that movement. Or, we might have kids doing a couple of like, different kinds of games in their iPad center to help target like, where their academic priorities are. So, even though all kids pretty much are going to all the centers, they’re not all doing the same activities, and they’re doing them in different orders in a different rate so that it feels a lot more personalized for them.
August 9, 2016
Teacher Discusses Leveraging Student Feedback at Roots
Roots teacher, Lecksy Wolk, explains how teachers are able to elicit and integrate student feedback to give them more choice and ownership over learning plans.
Transcript: Lecksy Wolk: I think right now, I think as the technology is new, and as our scholars are new, and we’re kind of we’re all – we’re kind of like, learning to navigate the system together, it’s not as high leverage as we’d want it to be, to be honest. But, what I think is – what we’ve built in is that – so kids have one-on-ones with their coaches. Hopefully once every two weeks, that’s the goal. And they’re asked, how is the grove? How are your activities? How is your class? And it’s very, very easy for us in our system to be like, oh, you don’t like this one activity? Okay. So you still need to do it, but we can add in other activities around it so that we’re like, what do you want to do right before and right after? Right? You’re like, okay. So this is your like, a kid can be like, wow, I really don’t like playing ST Math. Okay. We still need to play ST Math, but what if we put Legos on either side of that so you knew that right after you went to Legos the first time, you were gonna go play ST Math. But right after, you also got to go play Legos again. And it’s a conversation that a five year-old can have with an adult, right? And say like, I don’t like this activity. I want to try something different. Or, I really like this activity and I want to do it twice.
August 9, 2016