Chula Vista Community of Practice: Year 1 Archive

More than fifty teachers and principals from Casillas, Chula Vista Hills, Chula Vista Learning Community Charter, Feaster-Edison, Harborside, and Tiffany schools attended all-day community meetings on November 1, 2004, December 7, 2004, February 9, 2005, April 13, 2005, and May 25, 2005. These meetings, designed by Chula Vista practitioners with Ball Foundation staff and consultants, featured a blend of building community within and across schools, introducing new literacy content, and dialoguing around how to implement independent reading practices.

Sections of the reports of these meetings can be viewed by using the links below. You need to have Adobe Reader installed to view or print these reports. Visit the Adobe web site to download Adobe Reader.

November 1, 2004

At the November meeting, independent reading was introduced as the focus of the community of practice.

Part 1 [view this section of the report]

• Table of Contents
• Agenda
• "What are the agreements we need in order to create conditions for learning?"
• The World Café: "How have you changed as a result of your participation in the Ball Foundation Community of Schools?" [view charts from the café tables]

Part 2 [view this section of the report]

• Instructional Practice: Independent Reading
• Grade level teams: "What is happening or not happening in your classroom?" "What are questions or critical issues around independent reading?" "What prevents you from implementing this to its fullest?"

Part 3 [view this section of the report]

• Key issues, challenges, and critical opportunities around implementation
• Open Space: critical issues and questions, exploring the issues together more deeply to find solutions
• "Where does this community go from here?"
  

December 7 , 2004

In December, the community began to look deeper into specific practices, in particular, the "first twenty days" of lessons in independent reading and individual reading conferences with students as powerful assessments. By the end of this meeting, each school had drafted an initial action plan for how to implement some of these new strategies while deepening learning within their buildings.

Part 1 [view this section of the report]

• The World Café: "How will our work together as a community of practice affect the lives of your students as we continue our work together?"

Part 2 [view this section of the report]

• Debrief: "What's possible in this community?"
• Practice Exchange: The First 20 Days of Independent Reading, "How do we implement this at grade levels?"
• New Content: Conferring
• Cross-grade-level teams: "What is in place to support these practices?" "What obstacles to implementing these practices exist?" "What are some solutions to these obstacles?"

Part 3 [view this section of the report]

• School team planning: "What do you commit to doing before our next meeting in February?"
• Action plans
• "What do you need to build this community?" "What should our next work be?"

February 9 , 2005

In February, the community spent time reflecting on what changes in practice had occurred since the last meeting and how well schools were able to implement their action plans. New content about individual reading conferences was brought into the community, and grade level teams discussed a specific scenario about conferring.

Part 1 [view this section of the report]

• Agenda, welcome, and introduction
• School teams shared and conversed about their action plans (what had taken place with independent reading since the last community meeting).
• Home teams reflected on what individuals' experiences with independent reading were. "What did I do?" "Where did I have success?" "Where did I struggle?" "What do I need to know more about?" "Where can I help others?"

Part 2 [view this section of the report]

• Cross-grade-level groups (K-2, 3-4, 5-6) met to reflect on what they did (in independent reading since the last community meeting) as a grade level or as a school. "What did we do?" "Where did we have success?" "Where did we struggle?" "What do we need to know more about?" "Where can we help others?"
• Each school did a self-assessment around different aspects of independent reading. Schools identified what they were doing well, what they could help others with, and what they needed help with.

Part 3 [view this section of the report]

• New content: Video of teacher reading conferences
• Scenario: An ELL student can decode and read fluently yet struggles to comprehend. "What struggles might the student have and what strategies can be used during conferring?"
• School team planning: Learnings and next steps

April 13, 2005

In April, the community sought to deepen its understanding of conferring and independent reading practices by linking them to discussions about the Literary Response and Analysis standards. The community also continued to share the progress and obstacles in implementing independent reading and conferring.

Full Report [view this report]

• Agenda, expected outcomes
• Home teams: What has happened in independent reading and conferring at your site since our last meeting (progress and obstacles)?
• New content : "Coaching and Conferring with Readers," by Lucy Calkins
• Literary Response and Analysis Standards work session: What are questioning strategies that we can use in conferring to get at these standards? What would proficient responses from our students be like?
• School team planning: Learnings and next steps (action plan)

Photos from this session [view photos]

May 25, 2005

In May, the community used a standard on figurative language to demonstrate how shared, guided, and independent reading work together to address the standard. Furthermore, conversations about unpacking the standards of comprehension and literary response continued. The community also celebrated the end of the first year by reflecting on its work together and looking forward to next year's work.

Part 1 [view this section of the report]

• Agenda, introduction, and context for the day
• Demonstration lesson and debrief: guided and shared reading (poetry) for a 6th grade figurative language standard

Part 2 [view this section of the report]

• Revisiting the comprehenshion and literary response standards: conversations that unpack what the standards mean for teachers and students
• School team planning
• World Café - What story would you tell about our work together as a community of practice, and looking forward to next year, what story do you want to tell?
• World Café share-out

Part 3 [view this section of the report]

• World Café table artifacts