Posted 9:38 am Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Tyler Independent School District Teacher Training Focuses On Engaging Students
By MEGAN MIDDLETON
Staff Writer
With the close of the 2007-08 school year just days behind them, Tyler ISD teachers began their training this week on how to use the “5E instructional model” as well as a new online curriculum tool, both aimed at helping boost the level of instruction in TISD classrooms to new heights in the coming school year.
Staff Writer
With the close of the 2007-08 school year just days behind them, Tyler ISD teachers began their training this week on how to use the “5E instructional model” as well as a new online curriculum tool, both aimed at helping boost the level of instruction in TISD classrooms to new heights in the coming school year.
“Starting on the first day of school in Tyler ISD there’s a new expectation for how instruction is delivered to our students,” said Kim Tunnell, director of curriculum and instruction for TISD. “This summer training provides (teachers) the tools and resources they need to be successful given the new expectation for instruction.”
The two-day training event is providing teachers, in groups throughout the summer, with strategies on how to implement and use the 5E model of teaching — the new standard for teaching at TISD that aims to engage students more in learning and help them think on a higher level. That model is embedded within the new CSCOPE online curriculum, which the district is providing to teachers and showing them how to navigate during this summer’s training.
The five Es teachers are learning to employ are engage, explore, explain, elaborate and evaluate.
“We know from our data that we continue to have students that are struggling,” Ms. Tunnell said. “We also know that our kids today are very different and learn differently than the way we were instructed in the past. What we want to do is provide a new instructional delivery model.”
The 5E model finds ways to make lessons relevant to students, engage them and have them explore concepts instead of teachers offering a “stand and deliver” type of lecture.
“What we know is that our classrooms that are using the 5E model and those instructional strategies are successful with their students. So what we’re trying to do is take those pockets of excellence that we see happening and replicate that across the district and making that our standard for every classroom,” she said. “In the pursuit to try to find the best tools, the best resources that are out there for our teachers so they can really focus on the delivery of instruction instead of gathering all the resources together, we came upon CSCOPE.
“CSCOPE is an online curriculum with many of those components already built in — power points already done, (where) resources are available.”
Tyler ISD Teachers attend the first of a two-day summer training session in a new online curriculum, CSCOPE that teachers will be using next fall on Monday, June 9, 2008.
All TISD teachers —more than 1,400 — will participate in the two-day training, which began Monday and runs through July 31. During the last school year, all teachers were provided laptops to help make accessing CSCOPE possible, “any where, any time.”
Built into the 2008-09 school calendar is a full week off at Thanksgiving since teachers are attending this training in the summer.
On Monday and Tuesday, about 150 elementary and secondary teachers rotated through the interactive workshops at the old Peete Elementary, newly named the Tyler ISD Professional Development Center, which has been outfitted with computers, projectors and other materials to facilitate the training. The next two-day training begins today.
Teachers attending the workshops seemed excited about the possibilities CSCOPE could offer.
“It goes across the board to help teachers save time, and students will benefit because teachers have everything that they need,” said Beverly Dillon, a fifth-grade teacher who will be at Bonner Elementary and has taught for 21 years. “We’ve never had everything we needed. It makes me kind of go ‘ahh’ — just take a big sigh of relief. … I’ve heard teachers say they spend five or six hours on their lesson plans over the weekend. That won’t be necessary anymore. Everything’s spelled out right there at your fingertips.”
Teachers also seemed to see the value in the instructional strategies presented at the training.
“Today we must actively engage the student,” said Quantalane Henry, a journalism, sociology and AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) teacher at John Tyler High School who has taught for 17 years. “Through the 5E instruction process, you’re coming into the classroom, automatically engaging students.
“If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’re going to keep getting what you’re getting,” she said. “If nothing changes, nothing changes. It’s so important for teachers who have been teaching for many years to really reevaluate what they’re doing.”
Ms. Henry also noted the importance of raising instruction.
“It’s critical that we dig deeper and (students) have a deeper knowledge,” she said. “The rigor has to be there. The challenge has to be there, the higher level thinking — not just what, but why, how and what if.”
A LESSON IN CSCOPE
As part of the training, teachers learn how to access the lesson plans built into CSCOPE, which provides guided questions, vocabulary, instructions for advance preparation and various tips — from what research shows about a topic to misconceptions students might have on a subject. It also shows how the lessons correlate to TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) and designs lessons within the 5E model.
“In the past, we’ve provided the scope and sequence, but (teachers) had to create their … lessons on their own,” Ms. Tunnell said. “They had to try and pull resources together, and this is trying to help them be able to focus on the actual delivery of the lesson instead of trying to pull from all different places.”
CSCOPE also allows for flexibility, so if teachers have lessons that really worked for them in the past they can use it instead of CSCOPE, she said. CSCOPE is just a tool, but the expectation is that teachers follow the 5E model in their lessons using a variety of strategies, referred to as TIPS —Tyler Instructional Planning Strategies.
“(CSCOPE) gives them a starting place and some different ideas that are engaging,” Ms. Tunnell said. “So I do think (teachers) see it as we’re trying to support them. They have a difficult job, and with the accountability measures that are in place and with the rising standards each year, it’s our job to provide them the tools to assist them.”
It also offers teachers other tools, such as vertical alignment documents, that allow them to keep up with what is required of teachers from the grade levels below and above theirs, as well as instructional focus documents and year-at-a-glance documents.
“CSCOPE is written by Texas teachers, Texas region service centers, and it’s all aligned to what we’re expected to teach, which is why when they implement it with fidelity and they’re true to it, that the districts see and the classrooms see that use it, they see large gains because it is truly aligned to exactly what we’re held accountable for,” Ms. Tunnell said.
Dawn Hudson, who teaches fifth-grade math and science at Jack Elementary, said she is excited about CSCOPE because of the technology support and the alignment across grade levels it provides.
“It’s going to make our planning a lot easier. It’s going to give us additional resources that we didn’t have before. We did have them — we had to get them on our own. Now we can access them through the district,” Ms. Hudson said, also noting TISD is providing all the manipulatives (hands-on teaching tools) and resources that go along with the curriculum.
She admits that teachers are going to be apprehensive about anything new, but that on her campus, they are also excited about what it offers.
This curriculum could be particularly helpful for beginning teachers, she said.
“If they don’t have a good mentor, they are kind of lost when they first come in,” she said. “This will cut down on their frustration a lot.”
Even for teachers who have teaching experience but are teaching a new subject, this can be particularly useful, she said.
“Last year I taught fifth grade for the first time, and I was going out looking for people to help me in science, not having taught it before,” Ms. Hudson said. “I’m really excited about using this this year.”
Ms. Dillon said at her campus they were given a two-hour preliminary workshop on CSCOPE prior to this district wide training.
“It was the first time I ever walked out of a workshop when the teachers around me were going, ‘whoa, I think this is something we really can use here,’” she said. “We’ve got something we can work with. You leave a lot of workshops and you think, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to use this.’ But this time we’ve got something we can all use and everyone is going to be on the same page. And that’s going to benefit teachers and students at all levels.”
“Programs come and go in education. Hopefully this is something that will last for a good while.”
RAISING INSTRUCTION
In the last school year, school officials and leaders conducted “smart walks” through classrooms in which they observed teachers, not for punitive purposes, but to assess the level of instruction.
“We collected data on that, which is what we used, then, to say that a lot of our teaching was ‘stand and deliver.’ A lot of it was low level,” Ms. Tunnell said.
Smart walks will continue next year and the focus will become whether teachers are employing the TIPS they are learning at the training this summer.
In training sessions on TIPS, teachers reviewed planning out class discussion questions to spark interest among students and to provoke meaningful conversation as well as ways to engage students through props, videos, demonstrations and other techniques. A video was shown of one class “doing the twist” to a song about quadrilaterals as an example.
Lindsay Loftin, an AP English teacher at Robert E. Lee High School, said she thinks this training will get teachers thinking about how students learn differently — “the traditional versus the non-traditional and how kids’ minds think with technology.”
“I think that this focuses more on engaging the students instead of just your traditional, ‘sit down, let me give you a quiz,’” Ms. Loftin said. “This also encourages you to not be complacent as a teacher. We have the best of intentions, but we become complacent.”
Jim Westwood, a fifth-grade science teacher at Orr Elementary, said much of the 5E model is really just common sense. He said teachers sometimes forget what it feels like to be a student and have to sit and listen to somebody lecture for 30 minutes.
“This 5E model is just a new name for an old concept,” Westwood said. “The bottom line is you’ve got to keep the kids engaged.”
CSCOPE will be used in K-12 in the critical areas of math and science this coming year. Elementary grades will follow with the other core subjects of English and Social Studies being integrated the following school year. CSCOPE in all core subjects can be accessed at the secondary grade levels.
So when could the district see the effects of the new curriculum and the new standard for delivering instruction?
“Any systemic change takes up to three years to do,” Ms. Tunnell said. “However, we are going to implement with fidelity the math and science. The districts that have implemented the CSCOPE with fidelity have seen gains, so we are anticipating that we will have gains.”
What can parents expect to see next school year as a result of a new instructional model being used in the classroom?
“Hopefully they’ll see children that are excited about what they’re learning, that are more engaged,” Ms. Tunnell said. “Students are going to be required to think and they’re going to be required to perform and they’re going to be required to demonstrate that they understand what’s being taught. It’s not just completing a worksheet and turning it in and getting a grade anymore.”
