Showing posts with label CBM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CBM. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Double Supervisors, Double the Fun!
It's beginning to become amusing. I have two supervisors, and they both have similar philosophizes about school psychology, but there the similarities stop. One supervisor has short-sweet to the point psych reports, the other lengthy and very descriptive. One supervisor has a simple and quick CBM administration procedure, you go in to the class room alone, you pull kids, you give them a 1 minute probe, you send them back and you pull the next. The other supervisor you have a written schedule of what class you are to be CBMing first, what team you are in for CBMs and you have a stack of protocols and give each student 3 CBMs and take the median number, you have to go off of your list of kids, in order because your class list has been split with another person on your team, which then requires you to yell out and interrupt the class so you can get your kids attention. One supervisor is all about pretty formatting, the other doesn't care. LOL. I guess I will be especially well rounded after this experience, that or bi-polar.
Friday, August 27, 2010
CBM Days!
I've spent the last two days of internship CBMing to my hearts delight! :) I did Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) passages in 4 of the 5 second grade classes at the school (my supervisor did the 5th one), we also started getting a Nonsense Word Fluency norm for the first graders and I got baseline data for the Special Day Class kiddos so I can begin progress monitoring them on their ORF as well. Then of course I had to plug all the data in and run the analysis. This district uses Excel and SPSS to store and analyze the data - it seems really efficient. They also keep seperate aggregated norms (grade level norms that they add to each year with the new kids data so it increases the local sample size). I really thin I may end up being a data collecting and analyzing pro at the end of this!
Sunday, August 22, 2010
2 weeks down!
I finished off my second week of internship. It was still pretty slow, but I know things will change after the kids are back next week. This week we went over some CBM probes. Next week we will be doing a fluency probe on the entire 2nd grade at one of my sites in order to get some grade level norms to determine who the bottom kids are in order to form intervention groups. The following week we will do the 1st graders but do a nonsense word fluency instead. At this school site it appears that CBM will be one of my daily tasks so by the end of the year I am going to be a CBM master!
So although I know what I will be doing at that site for the next two weeks - I have no idea what I am doing at my other sites next week. It sounds like those sites are used to collecting their own data and the psych then compiles it and runs the stats to feel how the kids are ranked. But other than that, I am uncertain what the psychs other roles are at the school besides writing the occasional 3 year review report. I guess I will just have to wait and see.
So although I know what I will be doing at that site for the next two weeks - I have no idea what I am doing at my other sites next week. It sounds like those sites are used to collecting their own data and the psych then compiles it and runs the stats to feel how the kids are ranked. But other than that, I am uncertain what the psychs other roles are at the school besides writing the occasional 3 year review report. I guess I will just have to wait and see.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Data data every where
I told one of my cohort buddy's today that I am certain by the end of this internship I will dream of graphs and pages and pages of numbers! This school district <3's data! I understand that this is a good thing - but it is taking a little while to get used to! I am having flash backs of my horrid under graduate research methods classes. Ick!
First thing I did today was get a lesson in CBM. I was shown the Aimsweb data probes and given the directions and the script. It seems pretty easy and quick. I also got my logistics question answered that I had been wondering about - are we pulling kids out of the classroom for just a 1 minute probe? The answer - no, we just sit in the back of the class and pull kids while the teacher does their thing. We will be norming all of the second grade next Thursday afternoon. THEN we will get to plug all the beloved data into Excel and SPSS to look at graphs and see how the kids are doing compared to previous year 2nd graders as well as national norms. I am looking forward to the process. I will need to take close notes! Although I have always loved research - I am pretty ignorant when it comes to running data in SPSS.
I also attended a meeting on Professional Learning Communities (PLC's). They are all the rage at the moment. I still am trying to figure out it all, but it sounds like it really strives for collaboration between the teachers of the same grade level/subject. The school administration of the site I was at wants the teachers presenting the data in line with a pacing guide AND a daily schedule so that every class is working on the same thing at the same time. I can understand the pacing guide. I mean, it is much easier to say, you need to get through all these subjects by the date of this bench mark. But to dictate to the teachers how long they can teach each lesson and the order at which they need to present it? I think that is a bit wacky! I'm not a teacher, nor do I have any formalized teaching experience, but I really can't say that I would enjoy being told how and when to teach my kids. So I am not sure how well that portion will go over. But the general idea behind PLC's is rather positive. It is data driven, although not via scientifically valid instruments, and it encourages a team approach. So it could work, if the teachers are receptive to it.
The rest of my day today was studying the local California State Testing (CST) scores. We looked at about 16 different schools within the county (some in the Fairfield SD, but the majority outside of the district). It was pretty interesting stuff. We charted the last five years of API scores and how much the different schools had improved. It gave me a good idea of how are county looks on those tests. It was also very interesting to look at the population data from the different schools. I initially assumed that schools with a high population of English Language Learners would have lower API scores. Although for the most part this is true, it is not definite. A larger district in the county proved my hypothesis dead wrong! They were 50% ELL, and 90 something % eligible for free and reduced lunch and in the past 5 years they had raised their API 110 points! Isn't that outstanding?! I know that this district uses a form of RTI, although not one that matches Fairfield's model. Whatever it is that they are doing must be working! I would love to go an observe and try to find what their secret is!
First thing I did today was get a lesson in CBM. I was shown the Aimsweb data probes and given the directions and the script. It seems pretty easy and quick. I also got my logistics question answered that I had been wondering about - are we pulling kids out of the classroom for just a 1 minute probe? The answer - no, we just sit in the back of the class and pull kids while the teacher does their thing. We will be norming all of the second grade next Thursday afternoon. THEN we will get to plug all the beloved data into Excel and SPSS to look at graphs and see how the kids are doing compared to previous year 2nd graders as well as national norms. I am looking forward to the process. I will need to take close notes! Although I have always loved research - I am pretty ignorant when it comes to running data in SPSS.
I also attended a meeting on Professional Learning Communities (PLC's). They are all the rage at the moment. I still am trying to figure out it all, but it sounds like it really strives for collaboration between the teachers of the same grade level/subject. The school administration of the site I was at wants the teachers presenting the data in line with a pacing guide AND a daily schedule so that every class is working on the same thing at the same time. I can understand the pacing guide. I mean, it is much easier to say, you need to get through all these subjects by the date of this bench mark. But to dictate to the teachers how long they can teach each lesson and the order at which they need to present it? I think that is a bit wacky! I'm not a teacher, nor do I have any formalized teaching experience, but I really can't say that I would enjoy being told how and when to teach my kids. So I am not sure how well that portion will go over. But the general idea behind PLC's is rather positive. It is data driven, although not via scientifically valid instruments, and it encourages a team approach. So it could work, if the teachers are receptive to it.
The rest of my day today was studying the local California State Testing (CST) scores. We looked at about 16 different schools within the county (some in the Fairfield SD, but the majority outside of the district). It was pretty interesting stuff. We charted the last five years of API scores and how much the different schools had improved. It gave me a good idea of how are county looks on those tests. It was also very interesting to look at the population data from the different schools. I initially assumed that schools with a high population of English Language Learners would have lower API scores. Although for the most part this is true, it is not definite. A larger district in the county proved my hypothesis dead wrong! They were 50% ELL, and 90 something % eligible for free and reduced lunch and in the past 5 years they had raised their API 110 points! Isn't that outstanding?! I know that this district uses a form of RTI, although not one that matches Fairfield's model. Whatever it is that they are doing must be working! I would love to go an observe and try to find what their secret is!
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