SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) - The squeaking of markers filled the room, interspersed with sniffles and the rustling of two-dozen second graders shifting as they sat cross-legged on the floor of Anne Sullivan Elementary School.
Teacher Erica Tumbleson shared words of encouragement and advice to the kids as they worked on their own small whiteboards to figure out how many more pennies Franco and Sally need to have $1 if they each have 35 cents already.
No two boards looked alike.
Some students broke down the numbers into smaller numbers to combine and count up to 100. Others used lines and dots to visualize the problem. More still used some combination of strategies.
These students, like many others at Anne Sullivan, have the odds stacked against them when it comes to their learning.
Most are on free or reduced lunches, meaning they come from low-income families, and about three in 10 don’t speak English as their first language. Both of these factors correlate with lower scores on state standardized tests.
But at Anne Sullivan, these students are succeeding.
The Argus Leader (https://argusne.ws/2oK2EOO ) reports that the school’s English language learners (ELLs) are scoring higher than their peers at both the state and district level, which earned Anne Sullivan national recognition as a National Title 1 Distinguished School, an award given to only two schools in each state.
So, what’s working at Anne Sullivan, and could the same techniques help lift ELL test scores at other schools?
The unsatisfying answer shows the limits of data-driven teaching: charts and graphs can’t capture the myriad of variables that affect student achievement, which makes Anne Sullivan’s success all the more special, albeit impenetrable.
Teachers and administrators are reluctant to pin it on any one factor. But something in the combination of reading intervention strategies, data visualization and a focus on relationship building has created a recipe for success for the school’s 667 students.
Anne Sullivan was a pioneer in data-driven instruction for the district, but even with the tremendous amount of data available about each student’s progress, it’s difficult to pinpoint which strategies are helping ELLs students succeed.
The school uses a variety of means to help students, including reading intervention time, the use of data and a focus on forming relationships.
“If we knew exactly what it was that was turning the key, we would all do it,” said Demi Moon, director of federal programs for the Sioux Falls School District.
Anne Sullivan received its national Title 1 distinction based on recommendations from the South Dakota Department of Education, which looked mainly at the ELL test data, said Title 1 State Director Shannon Malone.
Translating those successes to other schools throughout the state can be “extremely difficult,” Malone said.
Even from one classroom to the next, it’s difficult to assess which intervention strategy helped the lesson “click” for the student.
“There’s a million things that teachers do in a day,” said Instructional Coach Bryan Conner. “They’re constantly having to make decisions that fit the needs of their class, and what works in one classroom can’t just translate and work in another classroom.”
The school’s use of data-driven instruction is not unique, nor is its intervention strategies for ELLs. But somewhere between the data walls and the one-on-one relationships, students are learning.
“Buildings take on the personality of their leadership and of their staff,” Moon said. “A lot of times, it’s a mindset.”
At Anne Sullivan, that mindset emphasizes building relationships.
The school focuses on students as individuals with unique learning needs and works to find out what they know and what they need to learn, said Principal Kirk Zeeck.
“It’s hard, and it takes a lot of time, but it’s worth it,” Zeeck said.
Anne Sullivan first became a Title 1 school in 2005, meaning the school receives additional funding. Sioux Falls has 11 of South Dakota’s more than 300 Title 1 schools.
“We spend anywhere from $1,000 to $1,500 per pupil in Title money within our Title schools,” Moon said.
All of that money has to be focused on reading and math.
If schools at the top of the Title 1 list are the highest need, Anne Sullivan falls near the bottom, Moon said. About 67 percent of students last year received free or reduced meals (the district’s metric to determine poverty levels), compared to 100 percent of students at Title 1 schools Hawthorne, Terry Redlin and Lowell Elementary Schools.
While those schools have a higher poverty level, Anne Sullivan does have the highest percentage of ELLs in the district, just slightly higher than Hawthorne Elementary School in the 2015-16 school year.
And those students require special attention in the regular classroom.
Before her math lesson, Tumbleson spent her planning period working with other second-grade teachers and an instructional coach to collaborate on an upcoming reading lesson.
It’s a long, detail-oriented process in which the teachers all lay out the goal of the lesson_what they want students to be able to do_and work backwards from there.
Collaboration is a key ingredient in Anne Sullivan’s success, but what helps make that collaboration more effective is the school’s use of data-driven instruction.
It’s a teaching model of that focuses on tracking student progress individually and specifically throughout the course of the year.
To understand how it works, Zeeck uses the metaphor of two people going to the doctor.
One person goes to the doctor annually for a checkup. The doctor tells that person how healthy they are and gives suggestions for how they can improve.
The second person waits until they are 80 years old, and then they see a doctor.
“And then there’s not much more you can do about it,” Zeeck said.
So, instead of waiting until a final report card or assessment test to see if a student is reading and doing math at grade level, teachers in data-driven instruction models work closely to assess student progress on a daily basis.
At Anne Sullivan, teachers have an entire room dedicated to student data and learning objectives. The back wall is a grid of student photos, placed according to their proficiency.
Teachers always know exactly where their students are in their learning, and they can tailor their lessons accordingly to make sure the students below proficiency are catching up, and the students who are proficient aren’t bored.
“We are able to understand those learners better than we ever have before,” Zeeck said.
Anne Sullivan has also focused not only on tracking student data, but also on making that data visible to students.
Walking through the hallways, there are displays of which classrooms have had perfect attendance that week.
There’s a bulletin board with a collage of New Year’s resolutions from teachers just down the hall from a display of which teachers went to which college, intended to encourage students to see college as the next step in their education when they graduate high school.
Teachers also use “data walls” in their own classrooms to track student progress in ways they can see.
Tumbleson, who teaches in the same classroom she sat in as a student when she herself was a second-grade Anne Sullivan student, lets students color in squares on strips of paper hanging in the classroom based on the number of spelling words they get correct.
If they get them all right, they can add a sticker to one square.
“They track their own growth,” she said.
Tumbleson doesn’t take anything for granted when working with her second-grade students.
Language is a barrier for some of her students, and she cannot assume that they’ll know the words she’s using.
She gave the example of telling a student, “Go get the red crayon off the back counter.”
“Do they know what the color red is? Do they know what a crayon is? Do they know the ’back’ table? … Just those simple vocab words, a lot of students even at the second-grade level don’t know yet,” Tumbleson said.
To help students understand, Tumbleson uses different ways to communicate. She uses hand gestures, visual cues and basic words. She’s also repeats instructions multiple times.
On a Monday morning in February, two dozen second-graders sat cross-legged in her classroom with their squeaky markers and their math problem.
“Franco has 35 pennies and Sally has 35 pennies. How many pennies do they need to have 100 pennies?”
At every step, Tumbleson gave direction. She walked around the room giving words of encouragement to students who solve the problem and advice to those struggling.
“Good strategy,” she said to one student, telling others, “You’ve got step one, now work on step two.”
When it comes time for students to solve the problems themselves, Tumbleson, with her stern but supportive teacher voice, repeats several times the instructions for students as they move from the floor to their desks.
The assignment is on page 308 of the student workbook_a direction that takes some students several tries to get correct.
Throughout the lesson, Tumbleson is taking mental notes about what students can and cannot do and adapting directions accordingly. Sometimes, that’s as simple as helping a student find the right page.
“I’m differentiating my instructions,” Tumbleson said. “So I’m teaching and meeting the needs of all of my students specifically where they are.”
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Information from: Argus Leader, https://www.argusleader.com
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