Dawn Cottnair

EDAD 543
Assignment 3
The Inquiry Cycle: Student Learning
What Kind of Evidence Will You Collect?
When asked to describe a teacher who uses data well, my principal had this
to say, Teachers that use data well, plan for data. (Benson, 2016).
Teachers who use data well, use multiple sources to determine students
struggles. Mrs. Blaine used the STAR Reading assessment, a quantitative
measure, to pinpoint her standard. In September she knew that 37.5% of 8th
grade students were below standard on evaluating an argument (CCSS ELA
Literacy. RI 8.8), 29% were within and 33% were above. Class discussions, a
qualitative measure, also showed her that students did not understand essentials
terms for argument argument, text, claim, sound reasoning, relevant, and
sufficient. Next, when asked to peer review papers, students had difficulty
evaluating their peers writing, especially in determining whether details were
relevant and whether the writer had provided sufficient evidence to support
his/her claim. Classroom observations shows students gave one or two word
responses and rarely asked each other follow up questions. Finally, Mrs. Blaine
chose to have student write to show their understanding of argument. She
planned 3 benchmark writing samples to show student growth. After reviewing
multiple data sources and collaborating with her team, Mrs. Blaine chose to focus
on evaluating an argument and claims in a text.
Throughout her Inquiry Cycle, Mrs. Blaine went through several mini-cycles
in her response to student data. She continually assessed, reflected, taught, and
re-assessed over the course of a few months to get her students where she

wanted them to be meeting standard all the while documenting her

instructional strategies along the way. For example, in one week she was trying to
get the students to talk about evidence and talk two different student
engagement strategies and found on ly 40% of the kids really discussed the
question and gave in-depth responses, 30% were silent and disengaged and 20%
were engaged and actively listening. She then decided that she actually needed
more controversial, high-interest questions that required more in-depth
discussion. The next week she asked higher-order thinking questions, Level 3
Costas questions and found students were engaged, but struggled without verbal
cues. She then decided to stick with the level of question, but add think/talk/write
times before discussion. Students then began to engage in deeper discussion.
Her theory was, if they could talk about issues in depth, now they could add the
written component of argument.
She felt her data was quite reliable. Not only did she have STAR reading
data to assess whether students understood evaluating and argument from a
reading perspective, but she had data about whether students could write about
the strength of an argument. Mrs. Blaines most compelling piece of data was the
written words of her students. She chose 5 students to focus on and kept their
benchmark mid and final writing samples. Even without looking at the rubric, it is
easy to see that the students improved their writing skills. The sheer amount that
was written from the initial ot the final assessment improved dramatically for all 5
students she chose to focus on. In addition to the qualitative data, she had
quantitative data from her rubric, the SBA rubric. On her first sample 90% of her
students scored a 1 and 10% scored a 2, and she expressed that students didnt

take a clear stance, their reasons were redundant, and only 2 kids had evidence
to support an argument. By sample four, 52% scored a 4, 19% scored a 3, 26%
scored a 2, and 4% (1 student) scored a 1. She was then able to articulate that
those who scored a 2 had evidence that did not connect to the reason or their
wasnt enough elaboration, and those who scored a 1 did not make a clear claim.
In the end 100% of the students improved at least 1 point on the SBA 4-point
rubric for argument and 72% improved by 2 points.
What Darren made clear to me is that why Mrs. Blaine was successful in
using data is she planned for it and she had multiple measures. Even though she
was working with writing, she still had reading data to support her ELA focus. She
had both qualitative and quantitative data that focused on her goal and showed
students growing over the 2-month process. Her data not only showed her
students growth, but she used it to support her instructional growth as their
teacher.
As a TOSA, I also wanted to focus on what how I saw Darren support his
teachers on the collection of data as their instructional data. Darren is very much
a get his hands dirty kind of instructional leader. He will never put his teachers
through a process without first having gone through it for himself partially to
plan for any pitfalls that could occur, but also to understand what his teachers
might experience so he can support them. A large part of Darrens success lies in
three distinct behaviors that I see: 1) he sits side by side with teachers, never
pretending he is above them, 2) he always goes back to the data whether its
student data or observational data he has conducted, and 3) Darren knows his
people he is constantly saying, well for this teacher I need to think about this or

for that teacher I need to remember s/he needs me to Darren is protective of

his teachers, sometimes taking on the responsibility of collecting the data for
them, just to support them through the process of inquiry, eventually releasing all
responsibility to the teachers. He understands how much his people can handle
and how much they cant and recognizes when he needs to wait as to not fully
overwhelm them. This is something I hope to learn more about from him over the
course of this school year how do you understand and respect your peoples
capacity, but at the same time build their capacity in service of students?