1. Introducing Instructional Expectations-- 2011-2012
How can we apply Danielson’s Framework for Teaching to observed teacher practice?
How does norming help create shared understanding of and expectations for effective teacher practice? 1 1

2. Workshop 1: Introducing the Competencies
Objectives:
Participants will:
Understand the logic and structure of the Framework for Teaching
Explore the priority competencies and how they can support improving teacher practice

3. The Wisdom of Practice
If you were to walk into a classroom, what might you see or hear there (from the students as well as the teacher) that would cause you to think that you were in the presence of an expert? What would make you think: “Oh, this is the classroom of a highly effective teacher.”
Each participant should be given at least 8 post-it notes. Have participants brainstorm a list—put one item on each post-it. List no more than 8 things. (8 minutes)
Table Facilitators: make sure all participants find the post-its, that they are writing one item per post-it.
The Framework for Teaching Charlotte Danielson 3 3

4. Bucketing Activity: Share and sort your post-its into categories and agree on a label for each bucket.
Label:___
Label:___
Label:___
Label:___
Share and Sort—with others at your table (4-5 per group), share your ideas and sort them into logical groups and label each group. (15 minutes)
Debrief—What categories did your group come up with?—elicit from different participants; create list of broad themes (10 minutes)
Table Facilitators: It is important to get the group sharing what is on their post-its and considering what goes together. Once they have made them into piles, make sure they label them. 4 4

5. Domain Focus— Adapted from Danielson’s Framework for Teaching
Planning and Preparation
Professional
Responsibilities
Classroom
Environment
Instruction
Professional responsibilities and behavior in and out of the classroom.
What a teacher knows and does in preparation for teaching.
How different are your buckets from these?
Are these useful? Is there over lap? Are there aspects of teacher practice you think might not be captured here.
(5 minutes)
All aspects of teaching that lead to a culture for learning in the classroom.
What a teacher does to engage students in learning. 5 5

6. The Framework for Teaching
Domain 3: Instruction
a. Communicating With Students
b. Using Questioning and Discussion Techniques
c.Engaging Students in Learning
d.Using Assessment in Instruction
e. Demonstrating Flexibility and Responsiveness
Domain 1: Planning and Preparation
a. Demonstrating Knowledge of Content and Pedagogy
b. Demonstrating Knowledge of Students
c. Setting Instructional Outcomes
d.Demonstrating Knowledge of Resources
e. Designing Coherent Instruction
f. Designing Student Assessments
Domain 2: The Classroom Environment
a. Creating an Environment of Respect and Rapport
b. Establishing a Culture for Learning
c. Managing Classroom Procedures
d. Managing Student Behavior
e.Organizing Physical Space
Domain 4: Professional Responsibilities
a. Reflecting on Teaching
b. Maintaining Accurate Records
c. Communicating with Families
d. Participating in a Professional Community
e. Growing and Developing Professionally
f. Showing Professionalism
Discuss structure of Danielson’s Framework for Teaching.
Danielson’s buckets are called domains, and each is divided into 5 to 6 more specific competencies, and each competency is broken down into 3-5 elements. There are a total of 22 competencies and 76 elements.
To help schools and teachers manage these better, we are focusing on 6 priority competencies—in red. These priorities are the highest leverage and often encompass many of the other components.
The Framework for Teaching Charlotte Danielson 6

7. Reflection:
In what ways do these competencies capture classroom practice?
Which of the priority competencies are most relevant to your work? Why?

8. Workshop 2: Understanding Levels of Performance
Objective:
Identify the distinctions between levels of performance— (between ineffective, developing, effective and highly effective)
Deepen participant familiarity with the priority competencies

9. Defining the Levels of Performance:
1 - Ineffective
2 – Developing
3 – Effective
4 – Highly Effective
Performance is unacceptable based on evaluation criteria, including but not limited to unacceptable or minimal rates of student growth.
Performance does not consistently meet expectations of evaluation criteria, including but not limited to less than acceptable rates of student growth.
Performance consistently meets expectations of the evaluation criteria, including but not limited to acceptable rates of student growth.
Performance exceeds expectations of the evaluation criteria, including but not limited to exceptional rates of student growth.
Ratings as defined by NY State Regulations
Truly meant to be evidence-based, objective measure for ALL teachers
seniority not taken into consideration
Applies across content/grade-levels
 Key to this work is setting consistent expectations about what each score means.
Spirit behind the Ratings
Ineffective - low-level of rigor, students aren’t learning, teachers’ efforts are minimal or lesson is unsuccessful
- NOTE: THE BAR FOR INEFFECTIVE IS NOT THE SAME AS UNSATISFACTORY. THE RUBRIC RAISES THE LEVEL OF EXPECTATION FOR PERFORMANCE BEGINNING WITH INEFFECTIVE. THIS WILL LIKELY LEAD TO A SIGNIFICANT SHIFT IN THE PERCEPTION OF WHAT GOOD TEACHING IS IN YOUR SCHOOL.
Developing - practices is inconsistent and only some students are learning, may be evidence of an attempt
Effective – plan is rigorous, most or all students are learning
Highly Effective - consistently exceptional performance, meeting the needs of ALL students, students take ownership over learning
NOTE: THESE ARE THE TEACHERS WHO ARE GETTING THEIR KIDS TO MOVE AT A DIFFERENT PACE THAT OTHER TEACHERS. NAME A SPECIFIC EXAMPLE HERE (think aloud)
For the purpose of New York’s Performance Management Pilot, a four-point scale has been adopted to evaluate a teacher’s effectiveness. State regulations outline the above descriptors for each level of effectiveness.
Charlotte Danielson’s Domain Levels of Performance (Unsatisfactory, Basic, Proficient, Distinguished) have been modified for the purposes of our pilot to reflect the language that’s come from the state.
Although historically 97%+ teachers have received Satisfactory ratings using a traditional binary system, we believe that closer to 10% of the city’s teachers are performing at the Highly Effective level. 9 9 9

10. Identifying distinctions
Review the Competency assigned to you with a partner
What are the differences between each category of performance?
Create an example of what you might observe (in or out of classroom) for each level of performance in your competency.
Assign each pair or group one of the six priority competencies.
Have them review that competency closely and discuss the questions on the slide. They should put their examples in the grid on the next page (this can be printed as a handout as well).

11.   Competency: _______________________________
Discussion: Getting to Know the Rubric
Generate examples across the 4-point rating scale.
Competency: _______________________________
Ineffective
Developing
Effective
Highly Effective
EXAMPLES
11:40-12:00
Guided Practice [5 min]
Table Team Discussion [10 min]  Each table team will be assigned to ONE compotency to work with for these 10 minutes (LABEL tables with this information prior to the start of the session)
Share Out [5 min] 11 11

12. Debrief Whole group discussion:
What did your group identify as key distinctions between each level of performance for your target competency?
What patterns do you notice across all of the competencies?

13. Workshop 3: Gathering Evidence and Examining Practice
Part 1: Gathering Evidence
Objectives:
Participants will:
Understand what low-inference evidence is and how it helps us accurately interpret teacher practice
Use a rubric to interpret teacher practice

14. Rating Observations Based on Evidence
Evidence is a factual reporting of events.
Evidence may include teacher and student actions and/or behaviors. It may also include artifacts prepared by the teacher or students.
Evidence is free of evaluation or interpretation.
Interpretation
Low-Inference Evidence
The pacing of the lesson was slow, allowing for student restlessness, disengagement, and disruptive behavior.
Joe finished his independent work before the allotted time and then took Jane’s pen and materials.
The teacher made a connection to previous learning.
The teacher said “today’s activities are an extension of the work we did yesterday.”
Review low-Inference
5 min 14

15. Evidence vs. Opinion…
Read each statement. Decide – is it low-inference evidence or opinion?
Discuss your answer with your elbow partner.
If you agree that the statement is an opinion, how would you reword the statement so that it is an evidence statement.
Trans: Now that you have had a chance to look at the criteria by which we will assess teaching practice, we need to think about how we document and discuss teacher performance.
I am going to put up some snippets of notes an observer might take during a lesson. Read directions. Activity on evidence—samples of observation notes, are these “facts” or opinions?
(1 minute) 15 15

16. Evidence vs. Opinion…
The teacher said, “I assure you that today’s lesson will be quite interesting.”
The teacher has planned and organized for maximum effect.
The last activity, discussion of the key scene, was rushed.
The teacher said that the Civil War was a tragedy for U.S. civilization.
Partners get 8 minutes
Go over for 5.
What are some rules of thumb on what evidence is? (Elicit) (2 min)—elicit before moving to next slide. 16 16

17. Reflection:
Why is it important to collect low-inference evidence before trying to assess teacher practice?
How can low-inference evidence support teacher development?

18. Activity 2: Using the Competencies to Interpret Teacher Practice
Objectives:
Participants will:
practice taking low-inference evidence
understand how to code or sort evidence
Identify ratings of teacher practice aligned to the competencies

19. Preparing to Observe
While you view: Take low-inference notes, take down as much as you can. We will only view the video once, as we can only view classroom practice once.
Coding sheets have plenty of room for you to collect evidence and a column to allow you to go back and identify what competencies are implicated by the evidence as well as questions or other inferences. It helps us keep the evidence separate from our interpretations of it.
Before we observe a teacher, I want to point out some tools you have. Particularly, we have provided you with copies of the rubrics for competency 2b and 3b.
You also have a coding sheet. Use this to take down low-inference notes in the center (big column). When you finish you can review your data and use the narrow column on the left to indicate your interpretation and to link pieces of evidence to competencies.
Before we begin take a minute to review the competencies we will focus on in our conversations today. (allow 2 minutes for review)

20. View Video of Teacher Practice

21. Reviewing Evidence Low-inference evidence share:
In turn, each participant will share one thing they observed
Make sure each item shared is low inference
Each participant should have a turn to share before participants share additional evidence
Note to Facilitators: The purpose of this activity is to reinforce low-inference evidence as well as provide participants with an opportunity to hear the evidence others gathered that they might have missed. Much of the evidence participants may share will be a mix of low and high inference observation and facilitators should make sure to clarify low-inference evidence or have the group help reword high inference observations into low-inference evidence.
As each participant shares one thing they noticed—ask the group Was that a low-inference observation? How could we reword it? Also limit each participant to one observation at a time so that everyone shares at least one observation.
Share evidence for10 minutes or until the group has generated a significant amount of evidence and is framing it in low-inference form.

22. Connecting Evidence to the rubric
Review your own notes, (you may also add any evidence that another participant shared)
Code your notes to identify which competencies your evidence supports
Note: some evidence may not fit anywhere and some evidence may align to more than one competency.

23. Appendix

24. H, E, D, I (HEDI) cards… H,E,D,I cards and establishing norms:
We need to establish wide consensus on what “good” or “effective” is. Good must be good everywhere.
Review your evidence and determine a rating:
Highly Effective
Effective
Developing
Ineffective
NA--not enough evidence to support a rating
Select the appropriate response card when you are ready and place it face down in front of you, but do not reveal it until asked to do so.
Participants will receive a set of HEDI cards for the purpose of norming. Facilitators should direct participants to rate the observation on specified competencies (You can do all six, but may want to focus on one or two to help develop familiarity with the rubrics and to better manage time). You will want to allow time to debrief on each of the competencies so you can establish norms.
Review the initials for ratings, also clarify the no rating card. 24

25. Norming
Norming is the process through which widely held understandings are established and justified.
Participants will share their ratings and will discuss their interpretations until they have come to a common understanding of the rating and the evidence that supports it.
Notes:
Facilitators may need to establish a time limit for the norming process. Allow at least 20 minutes for the first competency discussed and 15 for each thereafter (these are minimums).
If the group is too far apart after significant discussion, the facilitator can note that the group has not normed on this competency yet and should focus the group on discussing where the differences lie.
Norming is not a one-time practice, it needs to be done regularly. If a group is not normed, it should be assumed that they will meet again to review more video targeting the areas where they are in disagreement. In between, facilitators or leaders, may want to share articles or other resources they may help align thinking. The more a group goes through the process, the more normed they should be, but it may take several attempts before common understandings are identified and accepted.
Groups that start out in consensus, must still ensure that they all used the same understandings to get to their rating. They still must go through the process of clarifying the evidence and justifying the rating.