Cornerstone School Review?! Did we really choose this date?!! Where's all the student work?!! I know all those samples are here somewhere!! Leadership Team Meetings!! Visitors for 4 days in our building!!! Where should we put them? Is the teachers' lunch room available?!! Serve lunch? Who knows a caterer who takes purchase orders? Snacks? Coffee?

In the rush and anxiety attached to all that precedes the annual site review, we often need to remind ourselves of the overarching purpose that guides the Review Team: "to contribute, to inform, and shape a professional dialogue in every Cornerstone school." Ultimately this process should further professional dialogue and improve student learning and achievement in literacy.

The first thing you might want to think about when preparing for a site review is how to keep the staff informed beginning with the planning stage, overall school preparation, and the schedule of the review week. This process should begin on the first day of school at your opening meeting. Expectations need to be clearly established; and teachers, teacher assistants, and support staff should be informed as to what their roles and responsibilities will be during the review, and the information that will be needed from them. All staff should leave the meeting knowing that the review is a process that will enhance professional growth leading to improved student achievement.

How do we keep the momentum going? We continue an on-going discussion in grade level meetings, leadership team meetings, staff meetings, informal debriefing sessions, and whenever we find a group of staff members huddled around the coffee pot. The Cornerstone coaches are integral in guiding these discussions that help all staff understand step-by-step the review process.

One of the crucial steps in preparing for a review is the building of a student portfolio with work that reflects rigor in the curriculum, peer collaboration, and thoughtful feedback from the teacher. Monthly discussion of the literacy grade level targets and teacher discourse on established rubrics for evaluating student work within the grade level help teachers focus on the individual needs of their students. As a result of these clear expectations, the portfolio work samples demonstrate how a teacher identified the individual needs of the student, provided thoughtful feedback, and planned instruction accordingly.

Now that we have established our on-going purpose for reviewing student work samples, we move on to making our findings accessible to the review team. Samples are collected and organized by grade level and by teacher. Special care is given to providing as much information as possible on the work samples to facilitate the team members' task.

What we have also found helpful to our colleagues is a bound pamphlet of school procedures, schedules, and daily routines. This pamphlet includes information such as:

This handbook of information is spiral-bound with a welcoming letter from the school staff. (Copies of the letter are also distributed to all staff members.)

Once the review team's schedule is established, all staff including the custodian and cafeteria personnel receive a copy. Parents are also informed of the purpose of the team's visit through the school newsletter or a flier. Students are told about the visit and how excited the school is to showcase their accomplishments. Of course, children welcome the opportunity to share their thoughts about the inner-workings of the school, often divulging personal anecdotes about their experiences or required school routines. Bishop Woods will never forget when Dhe'shia, a third grader, insisted that team members during their school tour, walk single file on the right side of the hallway, just the way students had to walk. Needless to say, the tour did not begin until the team members complied.

As you plan for future school reviews, remember it is a collaborative effort that involves everyone. Working together, you will show your review team your school's strengths as a learning community—and in the process you will build many lasting memories.

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Looking at Student Work
Preparing for the School Review

The collection of student work offered to a review team provides one of the most important elements of evidence considered as they work toward a collective perspective.

Often, it is also one of the most disappointing. It is quite common, on the first evening of a review, for team members to look up from the papers they have been examining in some despair. The sample of children's writing is often limited in the range of genres covered, the vocabulary employed is mundane, and there is nothing in the sample to suggest that literature has been used to expand their horizons or feed imaginations. Ironically, the work seen in hallways and in progress during the review week often contradicts that first impression. There are very few schools where there is no interesting writing at all. Usually the magic that takes place in classrooms, once seen by visiting reviewers, illuminates the process and the labour that has gone into each piece of writing, thinking and learning.

From this, we conclude that schools need some support in presenting their sample of students' work to reviewers, so that their first impression is vibrant, not depressing. Here is some guidance that might help schools provide a sample that excites the reviewers:

From each class, select three students that reflect a range of ability.
The students you select will probably include the best writer in your class, one from the 'middle of the road' whose work illustrates a response to your teaching that has enabled him or her to make the most of their potential, and one less able student who is nevertheless attempting to write something of substance; blank pages are no evidence at all!

Present a portfolio of about six pieces of work from each of these.
The school's aim will be to show the very best that their students can produce. The portfolio will include a range of the genres covered, so typically in grades 2 or 3 it might include:

Obviously for schools reviewed early in the year, it might be difficult to assemble such a range so examples from the same child in the previous year might be a good supplement. For younger classes, the sample will mostly consist of daily writing and illustration that might be quite repetitive, but nevertheless shows some progression. Some evidence of process - for example teacher transcriptions of emergent writing - might be useful in these cases. Ditto sheets and answers to closed questions are not helpful; while reviewers know that routine tasks are an essential part of learning, they are chiefly interested in seeing how the skills that have been learned are applied in 'real' writing and writing from the heart.

Add a little guidance to the reviewer about the context in which the writing was done.
A good way to do this is with a sticky note attached to each piece of work. If the work has been submitted in a book where there is a large quantity of writing, page tags guiding the reviewer to those pieces you particularly want looked at is helpful to the reviewer and reassuring to the teacher. A very brief note indeed is enough to help a reviewer appreciate why it was selected. A date enables progress to be noted. The title of any book that initiated the thinking and writing is a useful bit of information. An indication of the learning objective - for example 'to record a connection between a personal experience and something that happened in the book', or 'to provide clear or well sequenced instructions', or 'to end each sentence with a period' - is also a very useful guide. A comment as to why the piece was chosen might tell more than any of the above. An example follows:

Date of work September 2004 Context of work Child had written a description of mealtime in writer's notebook. Example shows this first draft, and a second draft following conferencing with teacher Writer's strategy demonstrated Using powerful language Special comments about this piece of work This is the first time A has used the redrafting process to select more powerful words to express his meaning

So what is the reviewer looking for
The review team will use the sample to address a series of important questions:
How do teachers recognise and respond to the needs of all their students?
For example

Teachers ensure that they are providing a learning experience that is consistent with that in other classes?
For example:

Can students draw on their own experience and knowledge to help them tackle new problems, and to help them with their reading and writing?
For example:

Do children achieve the standards expected in writing?
For example:

Each reviewer will focus on the work samples from a single grade
The will look at the extent to which:

One reviewer will take a smaller selection from each grade and check the extent to which

How do we know we are providing the review team with evidence we are proud of
It often seems to me that work samples are hastily assembled a day or two before the reviewers arrive. My advice to schools is that they sample work, using the questions set out above, on their own account on a regular basis. Regardless of review, to do this once each semester would be a valuable use of the time of the literacy leadership team, most of whom will have been reviewers themselves and be familiar with the process. It is in line with Cornerstone's emphasis on school self-review. The support of their literacy fellow will help them to be objective in the process.

For schools that have not done this before, a good time to start would be four weeks before a review. By the time the reviewers arrive, not only will you be in a good position to guide your teachers in providing the best possible sample; you will know better than before where the strengths and weaknesses lie, and this can help all concerned to engage in constructive dialogue during the review week.

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CORNERSTONE SCHOOL REVIEWS
Fall 2004

Dates	School	District
September 27-30, 2004	Waccamaw	Horry County, SC
October 5-8, 2004	South Conway	Horry County, SC
October 12-15, 2004	Batesland	Shannon County, SD
October 19-22, 2004	Aynor	Horry County, SC
October 18-20, 2004	Red Shirt	Shannon County, SD
October 18-21, 2004	Rockyford	Shannon County, SD
October 25-28, 2004	North Myrtle Beach	Horry County, SC
October 25-28, 2004	Ross/Woodward	New Haven, CT
November 16-19, 2004	Dwight	New Haven, CT

 

CORNERSTONE SCHOOL REVIEWS
Spring 2004

Dates	School	District
March 1-4, 2005	Maplewood Annex	Bridgeport, CT
March 15-18, 2005	Bishop Woods	New Haven, CT
March 21-24, 2005	Martin Luther King	New Haven, CT
March 29-April 1, 2005	Freedman	Springfield, MA
April 4-7, 2005	Marin	Bridgeport, CT
April 5-8, 2005	Williams	Greenwood, MS
April 11-14, 2005	Threadgill	Greenwood, MS
April 26-29, 2005	Harris	Springfield, MA