TEA Collaborative Learning Group
Annual Report

Llong
2003

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How did your work with your team help you meet the professional growth goals you set for yourself?
Each year our school district has each employee choose a specific goal to work on but also has a school or district wide goal. This year our district goal is to improve reading skills by reading in content areas. My personal goal was similar to last year which is to implement more vernier probe and inquiry lessons. Another goal was to implement the TEA program by reaching out to other classes within our district to have them parcticipate in the TEA. Our collaborative group (Karen, Barb, Beth and myself), worked toward a variety of goals set by each person of the group. To worked toward our goals our groups established times to work together. Our district has established staff developments days that we set aside to work together. We also have common lunch and prep times which allow us to work together on a daily basis. Our group brings new ideas to setting up curriculum and new ways to teach the curriculum using the inquiry methods and vernier probes. They also were very helpful helping me with spreading information about the TEA program throughout our district. Being able to work with each person on a daily basis and during staff development days was essential in allowing the success of our group.

How did your work with your team impact your content knowledge and pedagogy?
Our collaborative group is a mix of very diverse learniers and exerpiences. Each person brings differenet persepectives to the table when we are planning units and lessons. Beth is more student orientated while BArb is more process orientated and Karen and I fit inbetween. While planning the different perspectives allow us to challenge students of all levels with different approachs. Earlier in the year our school district invited Dr. Ken O'Connor to teach our district about standard based assessments. As with many new programs our district set up many pilot teams which both Beth, Karen and I are part of. Barb is retiring so was not asked to parcticipate. The three of us are looking at our curriculum and seeing how it fits into the standards and how to assess students for a variety of standards in each lesson. Adjusting assesments to foramtive and summative is a new way of thinking and forces our group to make changes. It is interesting to see how each person percieves how these changes shuold be made and how we can incorporate inquiry lessons, content reading and vernier software into the lessons that meet standards. At this time we are in the early stages of writing rubrics for standards that students will be assessed on.

What materials / resources / workshops did you use / produce / host with your team members over the last year?
As previously mentioned much of our time was spent matching standards to our existing curriculum. Then adjusting the curriculum to meet the standards established by the government. After assigning standards we had multiple inservices on assessments and how to assess acievemtn through standards. The resources we mainly used were: Middle school science curriculum, Wisconsin's Model Academic Standards by the Government Cuoncil and How to Grade for Learning by Dr. Ken O'Connor. We also continued to use the vernier probe software and were in constant contact with the vernier 'help' program for ideas on how to manipulate the probes for use in our classrooms. Lastly, we spent a large amount of time presenting to 4th-7th grade classrooms on how to keep in contact with me while on teh TEA program. Karen and I presented multiple workshops titled scientists in the classroom to various groups that explained how the could use TEA, JASON, etc.. to show how scientists work in the field and how that can be brought back to the classroom. vernier,occonnnor, constructivism inquiry bases learning

Based on the past year, what ideas do you have to improve the effectiveness of your team interactions?
Last year I was concerned with setting up meeting times and we solved that by establishing that preset staff development days would be used together. I had hoped to discuss more TEA ideas which we did prior to Greenland however now we have seemed to focus more on standards and assessments which is more of the districts goal. Just as in life, people are busy. Again this year I will try to establish a scheduled meeting time after school that will allow our new teacher to fit in to our collaborative group. I would also like to get into peer coaching but other members are a little reluctant. I believe is another colleague observed you teaching and was constructive it would only improve everyones teaching.

Total hours of collaboration with each team member:
Karen 19 in 2002 plus 54 = 73 Beth 25.5 in 2002 plus 70 = 95.5 Barb 27 in 2002 plus 87 = 114

Additional reflections:
Barb will be retiring this year and a new hire will replace her. Beth, Karen and I are hoping to establish a time each week where we will go through the week and keep everyone focused and in the know. Right now we work well together and each person could work independently however we would be more effective next year with scheduled times after school to help a new colleague as well as conitnue to improve our curriculum and teaching methods.