At this time, all public schools in New York City have an Inquiry

Team in place. The role of the team is to analyze student data,

target subgroups of students in need of improvement in a

specific area, conduct research, and plan a strategy in

instructional practice to improve student performance in that

area. Our team meets monthly to reflect on student progress

and share updates with the school community. The current

members of PS 160’s Inquiry Team are Mrs. Russo, Principal,

Mrs. Anderson, Assistant Principal, Mrs. Hamdan, Assistant

Principal, Mrs. Rogers, Mrs. Wells, Mrs. Quiles, Mrs. Brody, and

Mr. Lauro.

T h e r o l e o f t h e t e a m

I N S I D E T H I S I S S U E :

The Role of the Team 1

Our 2009-2010 Focus Group 1

Our Question 2

Our Strategy 2

Additional Inquiry 3

Where are we now? 3

Where are we going? 3

O u r 2 0 0 9 - 2 0 1 0 F o c u s G r o u p

The Inquiry Team met early on in the school year to look at

ELA data from last Spring. We saw a weakness in our students’

critical thinking skills, particularly in our current 4th grade

students. We confirmed our findings by comparing these ELA

results to similar type assessments taken by these students. We

chose as our focus group, to monitor throughout the year, the

4th grade students who scored in the lower one third of the 2009

NYS ELA exam.

P.S. 160 Inquiry Team

“Using Data to Inform and Improve”

March 2010

Our question to each other was, “How can we help these

students to improve their critical thinking skills? “

We concluded that in order for our students to respond

critically on a test, they must first be able to read and think

critically. We decided to work backward and see if a change

in reading instruction involving richer, more productive

conversations (i.e. Accountable Talk) would bring about

improvement. We met with all teachers, in and out of the

classroom, who worked with our focus students to discuss

possible changes to instruction. We added additional small

group instruction as well for these students. We also decided

to get other grades involved because how students perform

once they are in testing grades has much to do with their

earlier grade experiences. We met with individual grades and

the overwhelming consensus was to begin by incorporating

interactive read alouds into daily instruction. Teachers felt

that the discussion strategies and questioning techniques used

in the read alouds would easily transition into guided group

work, literature circles and share times.

C

O u r S t r a t e g y

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O u r Q u e s t i o n

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With such heterogeneous classrooms in terms of language development, our

inquiry work took another turn. We consulted our ESL team for advice on

how best to implement our change strategy with students at such a variety of

language acquisition levels. Teachers were given a breakdown of ESL data on

their students including their language level (Beginner, Intermediate or

Advanced), their years of service, and an itemized description of their

NYSESLAT scores, identifying the areas (reading, writing, listening and

speaking) that were holding them back from proficiency. The ESL teachers

shared with classroom teachers and AIS providers how to best support critical

thinking development at each level of language development so as not to

frustrate the student or teacher. We also looked at sample NYSESLAT exams

to see how classroom instruction could better be aligned to NYSESLAT

requirements.

We have learned a lot this year about inquiry work. As we continue to grow

and learn through ongoing opportunities for inquiry, we hope to see an increase

in the amount of independent inquiry taking place as well as the development of

various self sustaining inquiry teams all functioning at the same time school

wide.

A d d i t i o n a l I n q u i r y

W h e r e a r e w e g o i n g ?

W h e r e a r e w e n o w ?

Changes in reading instruction along with student observations have led to the

creation of grade level rubrics in critical thinking at all grade levels. We are

currently working with teachers on using these rubrics to differentiate instruction

in their classes. At this time of year, teachers are also inquiring into students who

have shown no progress in reading up to this point. Our focus group of students

continues additional small group instruction while we monitor their progress by

comparing Fall and Spring data available. Our data sources include results from

the Fountas & Pinnell reading assessments, the NYC Acuity Predictive and ITA

assessments, and assessments from the Schoolwide Testing Fundamentals

Program. We hope to see a good deal of improvement by the end of the school

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This would be a good place to insert a short

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