Reading Portfolio
Leading Professional Development
Introduction
In the fall of 2020, I took the course Education 749: Strengthening Professional Practice. As a part of this class's practicum experience, I had the opportunity to lead a professional development session within my district. I facilitated a professional development session with my fourth grade team over a Google Meet. I presented on the topic of using running records as a way to progress monitor student's reading.
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The “WHY” of this Professional Development
As teachers we are always looking for ways to help our students and trying to lift the level of student reading and progress monitoring our student’s reading is a great way of doing this. At the beginning of the school year, when we were discussing our F & P Reading Benchmark Assessments, we discussed how completing our reading benchmark assessments was going to look a little different this year due to our school moving to virtual learning in March. Due to this, we discussed how progress monitoring our student’s reading would be beneficial in helping us determine where our students are at with their reading and assisting them in progressing and moving their reading skills forward. This idea of progress monitoring student reading was something very briefly discussed, but needs to be more fully developed. In addition, the materials and resources need to be rolled out to teachers so everybody knows where to access materials and are aware of resources available to us.
Progress monitoring student reading is also a great way to meet with students individually due to the COVID-19 pandemic and not necessarily wanting to meet with multiple students at a time due to social distancing. This professional development may help some teachers feel more comfortable meeting with students on an individual basis to progress monitor their reading and determine teaching points the student would benefit from.
Finally, progress monitoring student reading will be extremely beneficial and helpful when teachers are filling out quarterly report cards, discussing student reading with families, and the data is helpful if trying to get a student into a reading intervention group or if taking a student to a SST meeting.
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Objectives this Professional Development
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Learn about running record resources that can be used to progress monitor students’ reading fluency, accuracy, and comprehension.
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Create a plan for progress monitoring current fourth grade students.
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Apply running record progress monitoring with students in person in the classroom and virtual students.
Wisconsin Teaching Standards:
Standard 6: Assessment
Standard 9: Professional Learning and Ethical Practice
Standard 10: Leadership and Collaboration
IRA Standards:
Standard 3: Assessment and Evaluation
Standard 6: Professional Learning and Leadership
Standard 7: Practicum/Clinical Experiences
Wisconsin Administrator Standards:
Standard 4: Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment
Standard 5: Care and Support
Standard 6: Professional Capacity of School Personnel
Standard 7: Professional Community
Standard 9: Operations and Management
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Link to Standards Page for Additional Information and Descriptions About these Standards
Having the opportunity to complete this professional has been one of my favorite assignments in all of my graduate courses and is something that will be extremely beneficial in any type of leadership role.
When planning my professional development, I found that by creating the facilitators agenda and thinking about potential questions that would arise, I felt more prepared and had resources ready and decided to include extra materials in my presentation because of thinking through the process when creating my facilitator’s agenda. Since I had my facilitator’s agenda, when I was done presenting my professional development to my team, I didn’t feel like I forgot to say something or include important details so that was a good feeling. When completing and planning my professional development, I learned that giving participants the opportunity to interact during the professional development, talk, and share is an important part of making the professional development effective. I also was able to see first hand that allowing participants to interact and engage with the material while relating the content to the current situation teachers are in allowed teachers to really think about what was being presented and move past the practicality piece of things.
Through completing this process I felt noticed that I really enjoy putting resources together and organizing information.
Through this assignment, I learned quite a few things about facilitating PD and am glad I have the chance to present the material I did to my team. I am really excited because I have seen a couple teachers trying to progress monitor their students’ reading with the running records and multiple teachers have stopped by my classroom to ask me some follow up questions or to ask for help with analyzing the running records they administered with their students, and asked some questions about next steps. It felt really good that people are willing to try what I taught them about!
I was extremely appreciative of how supportive my team was of me in presenting my professional development material to them.
Document that I used to plan the professional development session. All materials used for the professional development are linked on this document.
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