March 25, 2012
What Are Crate Walks?
Prepping for the Future with the Common Core
With the rise in complexity of the texts we want our students to read and the volume of writing that follows, we are cognizant of the amount of work that goes into shifting students into a higher gear. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are not new to us since we have been talking about them for over two years, however, they are very new to parents and students alike. Whenever there is a shift in instructional practice, we need to remember that all people move at very different rates. Teachers, students, parents and administrators have varying levels of understanding of the change and in order to successfully conduct it, there must be ample time and opportunities to practice it.
As a means of helping everyone understand the shift to the Common Core, one activity we will be conducting is the collection of the daily assignment. The purpose of this collection is to understand from a snapshot perspective where the majority of our classrooms are in practicing high rigor. The activity is not to check up on teachers. If anything, it is a way for all of us to see how well we are doing at maintaining high levels of rigor inour classrooms and where we need to continue to improve. It will, in the long run, enable us to see the progress and determine the areas of needed growth.
On any given day, we will be moving through the school and visiting your classroom asking for the day's assignment. If it is not a written assignment then we will ask that you jot down the assignment or a description of the assignment. We do not want your name on the assignment since it is not about the teacher.
After all classrooms have been visited we will code assignments by rigor using high, medium and low. From here we will share the discussion and determine what the data means to us, what we would like to do in response to the data, and how we can provide support and direction for growth. Basically we are looking at this activity as a literacy walk-through on steroids.
The goal of the Common Core is raise the level of rigor in our classrooms and to more appropriately prepare students to succeed in college and careers. The days of just getting kids into college are gone since studies show that 33% of college freshmen drop out before the end of their first year. CCSS were implemented to strengthen the foundation for academic and vocational success after high school graduation, and to commit to this vision means providing the highest level of rigor in all of our activities including notetaking, writing, reading, homework, class work, group work, projects, and extended learning opportunities. The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium is the producer of the new assessment juniors will be sitting for in May 2015. You can find sample questions at http://www.dese.mo.gov/divimprove/assess/documents/asmt-sbac-ela-gr11-sample-items.pdf to get an idea of the difficulty of the tasks students are expected to complete.
The crate walks are one way for us to help prepare students to meet the new demands of the CCSS. Everyone has been working extremely hard to rewrite curriculum in accordance with the UbD format and CCSS, and the next step is to build into our plans the high level activities and challenging inquiry tasks that will lead students to being more successful at a higher level of rigor. As we move forward we will continue to provide other ways to help you implement CCSS into your work and continue to look to you to lead us through this exciting time in education.
