News: Teacher Based Team blog moves to Urbana North

Hello teacherbasedteams.blogspot.com Readers,

Urbana City Schools are restructuring buildings next year to save money. As a result, East will no longer have 3rd and 4th graders. It will have 4th and 5th graders.
I have been assigned to Urbana North holding kindergarten and 1st graders. In the past, kindergarten and first grade students and teachers have been in two separate buildings. This year, these students and teachers will come together in one building. Teachers had Teacher Based Teams, but the teams are likely different from each other. It is also likely that the teams are at different stages of development.
In this blog, I will document the progress of our new North Kindergarten and First Grade Teacher Based Teams. Here's to a new home, a new team, and great school year!
For those of you who are interested, please follow North Elementary at our new Twitter page. We can be found at UrbanaNorth.

Julie Willoughby

East Teacher Based Team Survey Results

In the last blog, I shared the questions from the end of the year Teacher Based Team survey. The purpose of the survey was to find out where we were in our progress and where we needed to go. The link below will take you to a presentation that shows East's Teacher Based Team Survey results.


https://docs.google.com/a/urbanacityschools.org/presentation/d/1Pj0qpzFF2moqpQlc66mkBUe40eMe523U60QFanrV32Q/edit#slide=id.p14

Survey to Measure Teacher Based Team Progress

This blog is a copy of the survey that our building leadership team created to analyze the progress of our Teacher Based Teams and to use as data to set the course for future progress. Our team used Google forms to create the survey for the staff. You could easily copy and paste this to Google forms to create your own survey. You will see a title to each question. This is an option in Google forms.

In the next blog, I will share a summary of the results of our survey at East.

Introduction:

The purpose of Teacher Based Teams is to bring teachers together to review student data and create intervention from this data. In addition, teams should discuss how the intervention went and what can be done if the intervention did not work. Teacher Based Teams is also a time for teachers to collaborate on instruction and learning strategies both before and after instruction happens. The purpose here is for continued improvement in instruction and student achievement.

Teacher Based Teams develop with time and professional development. This survey is intended to find out where Teacher Based Teams are now and how they can be better served.

Multiple Choice Questions:

Frequency of Group Data

How often is your Teacher Based Team collecting and discussing student data in group format?

Monthly

Twice a month

Weekly

We are not doing this

Frequency of Individual Data

How often is your Teacher Based Team collecting and discussing data about an individual student?

Monthly

Twice a month

Weekly

We are not doing this

Frequency of Planning Intervention

How often is your Teacher Based Team creating and planning intervention based off of data results?

Monthly

Twice a month

Weekly

We are not doing this

Frequency of Intervention Results Review

How often is your Teacher Based Team discussing how intervention went and what to do when intervention did not work?

Monthly

Twice a month

Weekly

We are not doing this

Frequency of Instruction Discussions After Instruction

How often is your Teacher Based Team discussing instruction and learning strategies after instruction has occurred?

Monthly

Twice a month

Weekly

We are not doing this

Frequency of Instruction Discussion Before Instruction

How often is your Teacher Based Team discussing instruction and learning strategies before instruction has occurred?

Monthly

Twice a month

Weekly

We are not doing this

Frequency of Sharing Leadership Roles

How often is your group sharing the role of leadership in Teacher Based Teams?

Monthly

Twice a month

Weekly

We are not doing this

Frequency of Sharing Notetaker Roles

How often is your group sharing the role of notetaker in Teacher Based Teams?

Monthly

Twice a month

Weekly

We are not doing this

Sharing the Workload

How is your group sharing the workload (for example, writing assessments, creating interventions)?

The workload is shared evenly

Some teachers are working more than others

This is a concern, because there is an imbalance in our workload.

Principal Support

Is the principal helpful to the needs of our Teacher Based Team?

The principal is helpful to our needs.

The principal is sometimes helpful to our needs.

The principal is not helpful enough to our needs.

Time for Teacher Based Teams

Do you have adequate time for Teacher Based Teams?

Yes

Sometimes

No, we need more time

Importance

Should Teacher Based Teams continue to be priority of the district?

Yes

I’m not sure

No

Response Questions:

Positives

What about Teacher Based Teams is going well?

Things to Improve

What about Teacher Based Teams is not going well?

Next Steps

What, in your opinion, are the next steps for Teacher Based Teams?

Ideas to Serve Students

How can Teacher Based Teams better serve the needs of our students?

How Data Changes Instruction

How does data reviewed in Teacher Based Teams change your instruction?

Measuring Outcome of Intervention

After intervention, how are we measuring the outcome in Teacher Based Teams?

Patterns in our Work, Ideas from other Teams, and Ideas to Grow on

In the last blog, I stated that I would not write another blog until the notes of the teachers and my notes were reviewed. In my review, I found patterns in our Teacher Based Team work and ideas from other TBTs that should be shared. Our Teacher Based Teams have grown in their work and will continue to grow in their work; and so, this blog also offers ideas for how we can continue to grow.

Patterns in our Work

The focus of our TBT work is to discuss instruction, review data, and plan for intervention. Anything that doesn’t fit in these categories should be saved for grade level meetings.

I have analyzed my notes from attending TBTs and saw some patterns that I would like to share. In every visit, I saw general discussions about instruction.  Intervention was planned and data was reviewed at 33% of all of the meetings I attended. At 25% of the meetings attended, there were discussions about specific students.

Ideas from other Teams

When I reviewed teacher notes from TBTs, some notes were missing in some TBT folders. In some TBTs, teachers bring a laptop to the TBT with them and take notes when the meeting is going on. This would save time after TBTs, ensure that notes are taken, and would also provide a review of notes for group agreement.

One of the TBTs answers these questions in each of their notes: What were we thinking? How does the data effect the group?

Ideas to Grow On

As we start to grow in our work in TBTs, we should start to hear discussions about what instructional strategies are being planned for an upcoming lesson. After the lesson has been taught, teachers then come together to discuss how the strategy worked or didn’t work and how it can be adjusted to make it better. This kind of work will move teachers into deeper discussions not only about what are best practices in teaching but what works best for our students at East.

When we look at the data, we are moving students into liked groups for intervention. It is fitting for teachers to have discussions about individual students as well. If a teacher is having a particularly difficult time with a student learning a skill, it is fitting to bring this up to the TBT. Together the team can recommend strategies to try with this student. Having a group of teachers around you that teach the same subject and grade level is a great way to get ideas and figure things out for students on an individual level.

Thanks

Teachers, thanks for all of your hard work in Teacher Based Teams. I am continually impressed with the work that you are doing in your teams, and I’m looking forward to your continued growth.

Intervention in Each Grade Level

At East, we have three different Teacher Based Teams. The third grade team consists of all third grade teachers and focuses on both reading and math. The fourth grade language arts team consists of teachers who teach language arts but may teach other subjects. The fourth grade math team consists of teachers who teach math but may teach other subjects. The fourth grade language arts team does not consist of any teachers who also teach math, but the fourth grade math team does have one teacher who teaches both language arts and math.

As you can imagine, the intervention for these groups is organized in a different ways.  Third grade students do not trade between teachers for different subjects like the fourth grade students. Most of the third grade teachers work with a partner teacher for which they might share students in different subjects. For example, one set of partner teachers chooses to share the responsibility of teaching science and social studies. Another set of partner teachers break up math students into liked groups for instruction sharing students in each other’s classes. Intervention is worked out between partner teachers. Partner teachers look at data and divide students up into groups that make sense for the focused skill. This makes things a little different compared to the fourth grade Teacher Based Teams, because third grade teachers have discussions about intervention more outside of Teacher Based Teams than in Teacher Based Teams.

As stated earlier, fourth grade teachers are divided up into a language arts team and a math team. These teams discuss groupings for interventions and intervention planning during team meetings. Two days a week students get intervention in language art and the other two in math. The other day of the week is for all school assemblies while teachers are in Teacher Based Teams. When students go to intervention, those that need direct instruction go to their core teacher for that subject. Other non-core teachers work with students who do not need as much intervention. These students are doing an independent activity that allows the non-core teacher to intervene with students in the room who may need help in their core subject.

Let me give you a specific example. Let’s say it’s language arts intervention day. The language arts teacher is working with a group of children who need taught in a particular skill in a different way then originally presented. The math teacher across the hallway has students in her room that are working on a language arts paper that has been assigned to the students as reinforcement. The math teacher sees a few students in her class that she wants to work with on a skill. She pulls those students to a table and works with those students while the other students are working on independent activities.

In addition, the music teacher works with students two days a week to do an extension activity that challenges students to think of a language arts concept in a different way. The music/language arts small group is hand selected and changed frequently by the language arts team.  The language arts team lets the music teacher know what skill to teach, but the music teacher does her own planning. Two days a week the gym teacher goes into classrooms and helps teachers with intervention.  The music teacher and gym teacher are able to help with intervention, because the whole school does intervention at the end of the school day.  

Before the next blog is written, I will my Teacher Based Team notes from this year’s meetings and the notes from our Teacher Based Teams. I am not sure what direction this blog will go to next, but I feel it’s important to review these document before deciding on a direction.

East Teachers are invited to Comment on teacherbasedteams.blogspot.com

In December, I shared this blog with my superintendent. I asked him for permission to share the blog with the teachers at East and link this work to my principal Twitter account @JulieWilloughb1. After his permission was received, I shared this blog with the teachers at East during the January staff meeting. Teachers were invited to comment on any blog that they see fit. The Teacher Based Team Blog has been an account of my point of view of our work in Teacher Based Teams. I realize that the principal will have a different perspective than the teachers in a building. East teachers are welcome to comment and correct any misconceptions that I may have to their work. As a principal, it is my job to support the work of Teacher Based Teams. It is called Teacher Based Teams however and not Principal Based Teams; and so, teachers’ point of view in this blog is not only welcome but wanted.