At this time, all public schools in New York City have an In-quiry 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 instruc-tional 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 mem-bers of PS 160’s Inquiry Team are Mrs. Russo, Principal, Mrs. Anderson, Assistant Principal, Mrs. Hamdan, Assistant Princi-

pal, 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 stu-

dents. We confirmed our findings by comparing these ELA re-sults 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

O u r Q u e s t i o n

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 criti-cally on a test, they must first be able to read and think criti-cally. We decided to work backward and see if a change in

reading instruction involving richer, more productive conver-sations (i.e. Accountable Talk) would bring about improve-ment. 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 in-struction 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 in-teractive 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.

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O u r S t r a t e g y

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Caption describing picture or

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 Ad-vanced), 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 frus-trate the student or teacher. We also looked at sample NYSESLAT exams to see how classroom instruction could better be aligned to NYSESLAT require-

ments.

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 cur-rently 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 Pro-

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

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