PDSA Revisited For the Common Core

PLAN Use “I can” statements form the curriculum guide to identify a concept or topic of focus for the cycle. (Teacher does this) “I can identify the movement of water, minerals and dissolved gases within the ocean”. (8.E.1.2) We will measure this on Friday 11/2, when we take our class quiz, all students will achieve 85% or higher

DO strategies to record on PDSA poster (Teacher does this) Mon: Create a Venn diagram, we will work in project pairs a Venn diagram, we will work in project pairs Tues: Create foldables and complete an activity on Edmodo Wed: Work in teams of four to create posters of the summary we made form the chapter notes and then do a gallery walk. Thursday: Smart board interactive game and create a rubric to grade Venn diagrams created by project pairs. Friday: We will take a class quiz over the concept for the week using quizdom

Do strategies to write on the board daily in kid friendly language (CWT) (Teacher does this) Mon : I will compare and contrast the processes of upwelling and down welling using a Venn diagram, we will work in project pairs Tues: I will identify tidal zones and the diversity of life associated with tidal ranges by creating foldables and doing an activity on Edmodo Wed: I will analyze the effects of tides, waves and currents on resources by doing gallery walks to create posters of the summary we made form the chapter notes. Thursday: I will analyze the effects that tides, waves and currents have on human life by taking notes and then doing an interactive game on the smart board. Friday : We take our class quiz today using Quizdom to check our progress

(Kids and teacher do this together)

Study Did we reach our goal? What helped us what did not help? (kids do this) 2nd : No, we struggled to get all the key concepts from the text the words were difficult 3rd: No, everyone would not help out in our group and some were lazy 5th: Yes, we really liked the gallery walk and the Venn Diagrams they helped us to understand 6th: No, we confused the effects on resources with the effects on humans, we struggled to make summaries for our posters, we could not pick out which facts we important, they all looked important

Act What do we need to continue doing or what do we need to improve on next week? (kids do this) 2nd : We need to do a vocabulary practice before we work in groups 3rd: We need to use a group rubric and everyone get a grade for participation 5th: We need to use graphic organizers to help us with big concepts, maybe we could have group competitions? 6th: We need help with doing summaries, maybe we could do a summary with an easy passage first.

Work smarter not harder Have your favorite do strategies on cards Use white board area or laminated poster to easily change cycle Get kids to be recorders/ writers on the posters Get kids to update graphs (write the numbers on a sticky) Have a fixed time scheduled for it each week The bigger the better – if kids can’s see it they don’t care Use demonstrations/checklists/white boards for assessment (kids love the attention) Use it as a motivator set a challenge for them Make it your own – internalize, think about it

Low student motivation improved If kids feel they are working together to achieve a common, achievable goal they will be greater buy-in. They will also start helping each other to be successful. Nothing succeeds like success.