Readership Story Discussion Guide

How to Use This Guide

This discussion guide is intended to assist California educators who wish to use the Readership Story video in meetings or discussions for implementing the continuous improvement process.

The questions and activities can be modified to fit the chosen purpose and audience.

Overview

School site and district administrators can be effective leaders for change by successfully looking at students’ academic needs. Leaders know that to improve their educational system, they must use a continuous improvement process:

• Engagement: build a team of committed academic leaders, educators, parents, and community members to work together to improve the system
• Data: review with a new set of eyes to understand what the data says and what the team would like to accomplish. As a team, determine which data will be collected and how often it will be reviewed
• Professional Development: sustain the change by creating a professional learning network that includes coaching. Calendar all meetings and coaching sessions for teachers for the school year
• Process: team chooses one change idea to implement at a time
• Resources: determine funds to support professional development meetings, coaching, and materials

Key Goals

• Readership starts with a goal based on the present local data
• Begin with a specific student group or grade level
• Provide reading materials that motivate students to share with their family and classmates
• Provide reading materials that are culturally relevant and socially and emotionally relevant
• Provide ongoing teacher support on teaching strategies and change ideas
• Coach teachers to choose a change idea and how to use data to know that the strategies and program is making a difference for students and families

Reflection Questions

• What academic goal would your team like to improve?
• Why is this goal important at this time? Have all the stakeholders been included in developing the goal? What is your team’s experience with Improvement Science?
• What resources will be needed to implement the change idea?

Activities for Group Discussion

Activity 1—Understanding the Problem

• Meet with a team and decide what data will be reviewed, and determine our current situation. What is the data telling us about gaps in learning for our students?
• What is an academic challenge for students? What problem are we trying to solve? What is going to motivate students to participate and be actively engaged?
• What does research tell us about best practices? What resources do we have for the team? What support do teachers have to try a new change idea as a team?
• How will we know if the change has made a difference? What data will be collected and how will it be shared?

Activity 2—Steps to Implementing a Change Idea:

• In the video, the change ideas were chosen based on a specific goal. Starting with a goal that is evident in the statewide and local data forms the foundation for the improvement process
• Take one academic or learning outcome and choose a grade level or grade span to implement the change
• Brainstorm all the possible reasons for the gap in outcomes. Then group all the reasons in to a fishbone diagram. These will help decide different change ideas to try
• Choose one change idea per team
• Choose the data to reflect the shifts in learning by the students
• Share the data and see what the data is showing you

Activity 3—Stakeholder Engagement:

• Share the goal with the parents and community
• Have the students share what they are learning with each other and create a short presentation. Share the presentations with the classroom community and school community
• Have the students share and include their families in what they are learning
• Groups of students can share what they are learning with other grade levels by creating Padlets and Flipgrids videos

Activity Questions

• Watch the video with your team and decide what aspect of the Readership journey your team would like to learn more about
• There are resources to explore. Carnegie Improvement Science change ideas could be tried. Even bringing in outside experts to share their ideas with the team. Ask the team: what changed ideas will you try?

Tulare County Office of Education (TCOE) Readership Journey

The slides used to accompany this presentation are available to help facilitate your review and discussion.

Presenters

Jenean Bray, TCOE Co-Director of Readership,
English Language Arts (ELA)/English Language Development (ELD) Curriculum Specialist
Jenean.Bray@tcoe.org

Tammy Milligan, TCOE Co-Director of Readership,
ELA/ELD Curriculum Specialist
Tammy.milligan@ersconnect.org