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New Leader: Practical strategies for student achievement

Our Pathway Journey

By Colleen Head and Ray McIntyre
George Webster School, Toronto

George Webster School is an Inner City Model School in Toronto with approximately 450 students from Kindergarten to Grade Five. Within our walls, more than 30 different languages are spoken. Although 60 per cent of our students were born in Canada, English is the home language in only 38 per cent of our students' homes.

Our school culture reflects the essential components of the Inner City Model School vision, which encompasses equity, inclusiveness, commitment, and achievement. As a school community, we are constantly looking for ways to meet the needs of our students to expand their opportunities. As part of our commitment to innovation, we engage in teaching-learning critical pathways that involve all teachers.

Our school has a highly motivated and caring staff. The students are engaged and generally like being here. As we engage our parents as partners, they are becoming more involved in helping our students succeed and sharing their vision of what they want for their children. However, our EQAO scores do not reflect the hard work and love of learning that is evident in the school.

During the 2007-2008 school year, we asked ourselves what we needed to do to help our students succeed in the area of literacy. To answer that question, our staff, in collaboration with our Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat Student Achievement Officers, did an analysis of our EQAO data. We looked at where we felt we wanted to focus our efforts to move our children to Level 3 in literacy and to continue to add to the literacy skills of those students who are already at, or above, a Level 3.

We needed more rigour and a common understanding. In order to do this, we needed to create an urgency to improve student achievement, empower staff to collaborate and share their knowledge and skills with each other, and to help staff recognize that their expertise and what they are doing does make a difference. So, we embarked on a collaborative journey through a pathway that developed into a focus on cross curricular integration. The teachers were given a voice so that the pathway met their needs. This was accomplished through our Professional Learning Communities in the school, visiting other schools, and inviting guest speakers into our school.

In the primary division, we engaged in a Think Aloud / Read Aloud strategy. The culminating task was a text connection to the book "Jeremiah Learns to Read." The concept taught was 'perseverance- never give up.' The staff found it a valuable exercise to moderate mark using a common rubric, assessment, questions and analysis. We learned that we needed to have some more discussion around what a Level 2, 3 and 4 looked like to develop a common understanding.

The Grade 4 team engaged in a pathway that involved backward planning, with a focus on Provinces and Territories. They made cross-curricular connections and created an integrated unit. We found it helpful in getting students and ourselves thinking more about the big idea. The children engaged in a kick-off activity involving a teacher created bus tour, in which the students had the opportunity to visit many of the tourist attractions in Toronto. Most of our students had never been to any of these attractions, so the trip built the students' background knowledge about tourist attractions and what might be important to include in a travel brochure. For the culminating task, students created a brochure to present their research.

The Grade 5 team used the same research steps with a social justice unit that had students research a Canadian right from the Canadian Charter of Rights. This unit culminated in students creating a Public Service Announcement about the right and corresponding responsibility. Through integrating language, math, drama and social studies, we were focusing on higher level thinking skills, questioning, synthesizing information and making connections to self, text, and world.

We had some successes. We saw greater results last year in the students who engaged in the pathway in the context of the integrated unit. On the whole, our students were feeling more positively about themselves as readers, writers and mathematicians, as reflected through surveys. Also, as a model school, we administered the Canadian Aptitude Test (CAT) to all students at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year. These results showed success. There were significant increases in student scores in literacy and numeracy when comparing students' individual scores at the beginning of the year compared to the end. Clearly, learning was happening. Our pathways were influencing our daily teaching and we were developing a shared teacher efficacy as staff saw the work was making a difference.

We are continuing to make progress in these areas this year as we embark on three pathways. Each pathway will involve a pre task and moderated marking, while focusing on one or two overall curriculum expectations and an 'enduring understanding.' As well, we will decide on the teaching strategies we will use to help move the children up levels, as reflected by our data walls

We are well into our second pathway, having completed a pathway involving the whole school, in which we decided to have everyone use the same language and even the same culminating task so that we would be able to clearly see growth throughout all the grades and divisions. In this pathway, we developed a clearer picture of enduring understandings. In our second Pathway, all grade levels are engaged in planning integrated units that focus on a particular Enduring Understanding. We hope that teaching the pathway within the context of an integrated unit will push students to higher levels of thinking, giving them authentic reasons to analyze, synthesize, evaluate, and create.

Through working together and sharing their expertise, the teachers found their voice in directing their job-embedded professional development and this has created more coherence in our common understanding. Teachers continue to share their voice to ensure that their learning is differentiated. Similarly, students are having a voice in their learning and are participating in collaborative, differentiated learning. Our children are definitely engaged in the learning through the integrated units and teachers are seeing tangible results from their work in the pathways. Students are also developing an understanding of how their learning will help them in the real world. This work is so important in creating equity of opportunities for all of our students.

Developing a Pathway in Cross-Curricular Integration

• Give teachers a voice so that pathway meets their needs. Can be done through PLCs within the school, visiting other schools, and inviting guest speakers
• In the beginning look at all available school data, such as EQAO. Choose curriculum expectations you want to focus on and come up with common criteria for evaluation (rubric or 'look-fors' checklist).
• Determine a common pre-assessment (by grade, division or whole school). It is helpful to determine the culminating task at this time. However, you may choose to change the culminating activity to fit students' needs as you go along.
• During the second Pathway meeting everyone would bring samples of the preassessment to moderate mark. From the data from the moderated marking you would discuss next steps to help individuals move to the next level on the rubric. Placing the students on a data wall is helpful in seeing progress throughout the Pathway. A discussion and planning of the steps before adminstering the culminating task would also be part of the second Pathway meeting.
• The third or final Pathway meeting would involve moderated marking of the culminating task and revising the data wall. Discussion on what strategies worked or needed revising would be part of the wrap-up of the Pathway in the third meeting. Plans for the next Pathway would also be discussed.

-- for more information contact Colleen Head, vice principal, or Ray McIntyre, teacher and school chairperson, at 416-396-2375.