Literacy Scenario
Martha Washington Middle School is a public school serving grades five through eight in West Philadelphia. In this context, I will be responding to Scenario II.
My first action would be to thank the parent for bringing her concerns to my attention and reassure her that our priority is to ensure their child’s academic needs are being met. I would schedule a meeting with the parent and members of the school team on Friday, leaving time to investigate the issue.
The next step after speaking with the parent would be to collect some data on the student’s academic performance. Using the school’s online recordkeeping systems, I would look at the student’s attendance and grades over the last several years for all subjects, making careful note of both Math and Reading grades as well as any trends. I would also look at the current year’s grades to date in both Reading and Math. The next data I would access online is PSSA and Benchmark performance for sixth grade. That data is very easily organized to show performance by standard, skill, deficit, strength, etc. and highlight any trends.
Since the student has been struggling for the first two months of school and earning a D grade by Interim Reports, she will have already been entered into Tier I of the district’s Response To Intervention and Instruction (RTII) process. In this tier, I should see evidence of classroom-based strategies implemented by the teacher to increase the student’s proficiency and performance. If there was evidence of 30 days of consistent and sustained Tier I interventions, I would push for the team to consider moving the student to Tier II, which would access more rigorous academic interventions. In the event that the teacher had not yet begun to consistently implement interventions at the classroom level, I would direct the school’s teacher leader to assist with meeting the requirements of Tier I. I would also suggest reaching out to the sixth-grade math teacher. Since the student was successful in her class, it would be worthwhile to explore the interventions and methods she used to help the student succeed.
Once I had a complete academic profile, I would informally observe the math class and look for evidence of comprehension strategies being taught in a math context. Comprehension strategies are a key component of the majority of PA Core Standards, and a necessary skill to access the PA Eligible Content on PSSAs. I want to see that in every classroom there is evidence of collaborative learning being implemented and reinforced in a meaningful way. In a math class, that would be evident by observing students work in pairs using a three-step process to solve a problem together. First, one student would read the problem out loud to his/her partner. Step two, the second student would restate or summarize the problem that was just read by the partner. In step three, the students would collaborate on applying the strategy that had been previously taught by the teacher and coming up with an answer as well as an explanation for how they reached the answer. This process is valuable for aiding comprehension by conversation, and students are learning from each other in a problem-solving context and not only by teacher-led instruction.
If I did not see adequate evidence of comprehension based instructional strategies, I would reach out to the school’s teacher leader and ask her to work with the teacher to make sure those procedures are being both explicitly taught and consistently utilized in the classroom. As part of the teacher leader’s support, she would both model the use of instructional strategies as well as assist in determining which strategies are most appropriate for a targeted concept. To facilitate professional development, I would arrange for teacher coverage sometime in the next week so that the math teacher could engage in online professional development about using reading comprehension strategies to drive math proficiency. After providing the teacher with several vehicles to implement and advance reading comprehension instruction in the math context, I would follow up with another observation looking for more evidence of the specific instructional methods (including collaborative learning). Should I fail to observe sufficient progress towards proficient use of comprehension based instructional strategies, I would begin a more formal improvement process.
Before the parent meeting, I would meet with the math teacher and teacher leader to review their plan for the student, noting the strategies and interventions and instructional methods that are currently used and will be implemented to ensure the student’s comprehension needs are being met in the math context. This plan is focused on the student, and not the teacher- should the student move to another school, the plan would be such that any educator could successfully implement it to ensure student success. At the parent meeting, I would have the teacher explain the learning plan and the various instructional methods that teach and reinforce comprehension in a math context. In an effort to clear up any misunderstanding, I would ask the teacher to explain to the parent that although the teacher doesn’t explicitly teach reading comprehension, reading comprehension strategies are constantly being reinforced and implemented within the context of math instruction.