Wisconsin Student/School Learning Objective Planning Template

Name(s): Rebecca Holder, Patti Paul, Matt McClenaghan, Mary Grace Jones
Subject Area/Grade Level:
Reading / Special Education: 9-12 (High School)
Baseline Data and Rationale:
Our student population struggles with reading, comprehension, and vocabulary. We
chose vocabulary because this skill translates in all academic areas, and is imperative
to reading comprehension and assignment completion. According to STAR data, on
average, our students are between seven and five reading levels below grade level.
Along with low reading levels comes the difficulty with functional academic language.
As students come across academic terms in all of their classes, their ability to
perform the tasks required in certain prompts adequately is in question with respect to
their understanding of the terms themselves.
We will focus on the students understanding, application and interaction with five key
functional academic terms that each of them encounter in their daily classes:
Analyze, Infer, Persuade, Explain, Describe
The focus and goal of the teams SLO efforts is to Introduce, Engage, Observe and
Reflect on student interaction and utilization of the functional academic terms by
creating and assessing individual work product and task performance.
Learning Content and Grade Level:
My particular study group will be comprised of 9th and 10th grade students. I will
engage my students over the school year in classroom environments, lead teaching
and co-teaching as well as in resource study halls through reteaching, review and
instruction of literacy curriculum as well as general academic support as needed.
Panther Power Nine for Literacy in All Subjects:
Language 4 - Determine or clarify the meanings of unknown or multiple-meaning
words and phrases by using context clues, analyzing meaningful word parts, and
consulting general specialized reference materials, as appropriate.
Language 6 - Acquire and use accurately a range of general academic and domainspecific words and phrases sufficient for reading, writing, speaking, and listening at
the college and career readiness level; demonstrate independence in gathering
vocabulary knowledge when considering a word or phrase important to
comprehension or expression.
Writing 1 - Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or
texts using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.

Student Population:
We will pick 4-5 students that we have on a class list (Reading Workshop), or in a
supported/co-taught classroom, or that we support in Resource Study Halls. Not all
students will be our own caseload students, but some of them might be. Primary
choices for students involved in this proposal will be students that overlap in the
teachers academic classes and resource classes, in order to draw upon curricular
specific vocabulary and assigned tasks involving the functional academic terms. Of
particular concern will be arranging student lists that allow for us to see and interact
with the subject group.
Targeted Growth:
We will administer a pretest that measures each students self-awareness, clear
understanding and application of the identified terms. A scoring rubric has been
developed to measure each students level of awareness with respect to each term.
Student growth will be reflected in formative vocabulary lessons and activities, leading
to a summative assessment. We will also administer the pretest, a second time, as a
post test at the end of the school year to see if growth was achieved and can be
demonstrated on the same assessment.
The targeted growth will be measured by improved scores on the pretest upon the
second administration. The goal will be that each student will improve their overall
rubric score by rubric score upon completion.
Interval: 2015 - 2016 School Year
We will begin in November and end in May to acquire three semesters worth of
growth. My personal journey through this SLO process needed to be restructured and
designed to meet the changes in my teaching schedule for the 2nd semester. Initially,
I was to be teaching another two Reading Workshop classes, but schedules changed.
I had identified students that I would see throughout the school year or have access to
in my Reading Workshop class where I would have access to them and could design
instruction and review easily. At the turn of the semester, I designed a plan to work
with a study group of students that I see regularly in Resource Study Halls. I also
see a majority of these students in co-teaching situations during the school day.
Assessment/Evidence Source(s):
Formative and Summative Assessments
Student Work Samples - Vocabulary
Pre- Test and Summary Test
Writing Samples
Discussion Samples
Formative: test data, rubrics, pretest
Summative: writing and discussion, other work samples

SLO Goal Statement:

The goal related to my Student Learning Objective involves student performance
regarding knowledge and expression of Tier 2 vocabulary. Specifically, we will
examine five academic terms, (analyze, infer, persuade, explain and describe) from
November 2015 until May 2016.
Goal Statement:
Students will demonstrate literacy gains, of points on a rubric scale, as evidenced
by their performance on an assessment instrument that measures literacy with
respect to understanding, awareness and ability to apply identified academic terms.
Instructional Strategies and Support:
The intervention will include learning about and implementing tiered vocabulary
instruction. We will research and read about tiered vocabulary instruction, and
choose activities and assessments to complete with target students. We will consider
any workshops or conferences about teaching vocabulary would help support our
goal. We will collaborate with each other, Andrea Anderson, Kim White, Nicole Buol
and other faculty as needed.
We will utilize direct instruction, interactive lessons, vocabulary practice, objective
assessments, examination and interaction with reading passages, writing
assignments and a variety of interactions with textual material. We will focus on
increasing literacy with respect to engages and using specific academic vocabulary.

Mid-Interval Review
Date Mid-Interval information completed: 03/01/2016
Mid-Interval Status of SLO:
Goal Statement, elements, and process are on target and do not require revision.
I believe that I have made good progress on the SLO goal. I have set up my study
group of students at the start of the 2nd semester. I have met, discussed and
conferred with my SLO teammates to share planning and implementation of the
instruments, instruction and measures that we are using to measure learning and
progress of our students to the realization of the anticipated goal. Each of our
plans, instruments and procedures have become unique and specific to our own
inquiry and experience, but the essence of the endeavor remains similar and
common in spirit.
The results I gathered from the initial pretest show confidence in my students

that they know the terms, but a wide gap between what that concept is and what
they truly understand exists. Adequate understanding of the terms to allow for
application and responding to prompts including these terms is absent in my study
group as a whole.
I have discussed, defined and introduced functional application of the academic
terms with my study group in individual settings and situations. I have delivered a
PowerPoint on Inferences, as I have concluded that the academic term Infer will
be a focus term for the completion of the SLO goal measurement.
Articulate strategies / modifications to address barriers (if necessary):
Not necessary.
Revised SLO goal statement (if necessary):
Not necessary.
Describe changes and provide rationale for changes (if necessary):
Not necessary.

End-of-Interval Review
Date End-of-Interval information completed: 05/23/2016
How did things around you (your environment or context) impact the
implementation and results of your SLO?
Initially, my plan and the SLO process was conceived and designed with the
understanding that I would be teaching a class entitled Reading Workshop. At the
semester, my teaching assignment changed and I was no longer going to be in a
classroom, designing and delivering lessons. Early plans were a good fit for that
teaching situation, but at the semester break, I moved into all co-teaching classrooms
and courses.
This environment was not convenient for pulling students from their regular instruction
to work on the curriculum involved with the SLO. The saving grace was that I had
delivered much of the planned instruction prior to the semester break, and by fate was
seeing many students from the first semester and the study group in co-taught class
or resource periods. It created a piecemeal or patchwork situation for seeing the SLO
study group kids, but it worked out.
I was able to see them enough and find time to fit things in between other work,
instruction and assignments. It wasnt perfect, but we made do. Again, much of the
groundwork had been done in the first semester. I simply needed to address the terms
that most struggled with and design a group to work with that was available to me and
that represented a good cross-section of the kids I started with.

I was able to break the kids into three groups:

My Study Group:

Riley Adkins
Lillian Black
Sarah Dragone
Trevor Klinger
Lucas Torres

My Control Group:

Cristian Carlos
Bailey Clark
Lizzie Prew
Riley Schultz
Taylor Soule

Alternates:

Kayla Aberle
Bailey George
Shomari Lee
Camren Swangstu
Faith Trinidad

As we progressed from the cold call pretest that many students were very surprised
and intimidated by, the mystery and anxiety waned and we were able to work through
the academic terms and focused on inference or infer as our terms of choice. We
did focus on infer, but it was clear that my students had benefited simply from the
discussion of the other terms we had addressed.
Our goal was to see an improvement in scores across the board for all students in the
study group of a .50 point rubric increase. What was encouraging was the fact that all
students scores increased on the rubric as a whole. The average increase for all
students was .47 points. Just a bit shy of the .50 point we targeted, but so very close,
enough to commend them for the effort and improvement. As expected was the
increase in the literacy and command of the term infer. At the pretest, it was by far
the lowest scoring term in the rubric across the board for all but one student. After the
instruction, practice and post test, infer was no longer the term most did not grasp.
The new lowest scoring term was analyze. Students created great Frayer Models,
waded through some difficult reading passages and had some fun along the way. The
most encouraging fact is that there was improvement that can be traced to instruction.
What did you learn that would inform future SLO plans or strategies?
I learned that it is okay to look for incremental increases in literacy and performance
from my students. I also learned that it is good to always be flexible in your plans and

the implementation of your project. The most important thing is to have a good cross
section of students to create your group from. Surprisingly, the kids are quite willing to
participate and see it as a welcome diversion many days. I also feel that along with
my PPG this year, i feel it would be beneficial to get to planning ahead of time and
have an idea now what the SLO and PPG will be for next year. The start of the year
this past school year was not a great time for me to be thinking about SLO and PPG.
This past Fall, I was a newly hired teacher to a new district and was spending
significant time getting acquainted with colleagues, caseload students, parents,
classroom students, paperwork demands and generally the hectic nature of the start
of the school year. Brainstorming with unfamiliar faces for ideas and planning for a
research project at the start of the year was not easy. All in all, it worked out well and I
truly enjoyed the process. I believe in vocabulary instruction, especially as it applies to
academic vocabulary.
Additional comments:
The value of vocabulary instruction as it applies to academic vocabulary is priceless.
Years ago, I worked with colleagues that rose to the challenge of identifying our ten
most common academic terms used in classrooms, assignments and assessments. I
believe that any school that is focused on improving literacy and student ability must
focus on academic vocabulary instruction. The underlying question is whether we
have students that have been taught the skills and understand what is being asked of
them when they are prompted with what might be an unfamiliar or difficult prompt. As I
found here in my efforts in this SLO process, a student will not be able to infer
anything if they do not know the word.

RUBRIC OVERVIEW
Both educators and evaluators will use the Scoring Rubric (below) to determine SLO and
Outcome Summary Scores, respectively. Educators will self-score their individual SLOs in all
years (Supporting and Summary Years). Evaluators will assign a holistic score considering all
SLOs across the cycle - the implementation process and its impact on student progress.
Drawing upon the preponderance of evidence and using the Scoring Rubric, evaluators
determine an educators holistic Outcome Summary Score by identifying the rubric level which
best describes the educators implementation process and student growth. This process of
holistic scoring offers flexibility based on professional discretion. It allows evaluators to
recognize student growth as well as professional growth across the Effectiveness cycle, which
aligns with the purpose of the Wisconsin Educator Effectiveness System.
SCORING RUBRIC
Score Criteria
4

Educator engaged in a

Description (not exhaustive)

Based on evidence aligned to the SLO and Outcome
Process Guide, the educator set rigorous, superior goal(s)

comprehensive, datadriven process that

resulted in exceptional
student growth.

based on a comprehensive analysis of all required and

supplemental data sources; skillfully used appropriate
assessments; continuously monitored progress; strategically
revised instruction based on progress monitoring data; and
reflected on the process across the year/cycle in a
consistent, accurate and thoughtful way. Evidence indicates
the targeted populations growth exceeded the expectations
described in the goal.

Student growth has

exceeded goal(s).
3

Educator engaged in a
data-driven process that
resulted in student growth.

Based on evidence aligned to the SLO and Outcome

Process Guide, the educator set attainable goal(s) based on
a comprehensive analysis of all required and supplemental
data sources; used appropriate assessments; monitored
progress; adjusted instruction based on progress monitoring
data; and reflected on the process across the year/cycle in
an accurate or consistent way.
Evidence indicates the targeted population met the
expectations described in the goal.

Student growth has met

goal(s).
2

Educator engaged in a
process that resulted in
inconsistent student
growth.

Based on evidence aligned to the SLO and Outcome

Process Guide, the educator set a goal; used assessments;
inconsistently monitored progress; inconsistently or
inappropriately adjusted instruction; and reflected on the
process across the year/cycle in an inconsistent and/or
inaccurate way.
Evidence indicates the targeted population partially met
expectations described in the goal.

Student growth has

partially met goal.
1

Educator engaged in a
process that resulted in
minimal or no student
growth.

Student growth has not

met goal(s).

Based on evidence aligned to the SLO and Outcome

Process Guide, the educator set inappropriate goal(s);
inconsistently or inappropriately used assessments; did not
monitor progress; did not adjust instruction based on
progress monitoring data; and did not reflect on the process
across the year/cycle in a consistent, accurate, and
thoughtful way. Evidence indicates the targeted population
has not met the expectations described in the goal.

TEACHER SELF EVALUATION

In my reflection on the SLO process and working through the rubric, I believe that my efforts and
product would fall in a range between 2.5 and 3.0. I have set an attainable goal that was based
based on an analysis data obtained from a common testing instrument designed by the Reading
team as a measure of student literacy. I have used appropriate assessments and designed
instruction and learning experiences to address the deficiencies. I have created equitable
groups to engage in this SLO process and monitored progress over the time designed for the
research and remedial instruction.
I would not agree that I have inconsistently monitored progress; inconsistently or inappropriately
adjusted instruction; and reflected on the process across the year/cycle in an inconsistent
and/or inaccurate way. I spent significant time collaborating, planning, designing, implementing
and reflecting on the SLO process and product.
My process was driven by data and was generated out of a data-driven process. My
measurement instrument was designed with teachers working with similar populations and
seeking similar goals for improvement. The group that was the subject of my SLO process was
compared to students that were similarly situated to create an equitable situation in choosing
participants. I did see growth in every student in my study group. Overall, there was small but
positive growth in the literacy I set out to measure. My realization of an increase of a .50 rubric
score increase across the board for my group was attainable and reasonable, but they only
demonstrated an increase of .47 on average across the rubric for the group. Close but no cigar!
In my opinion, growth was the goal and student literacy, ability and confidence are just as
important as the small margin of falling just a bit short. My feeling on this is that the individual
people, my students should be the focus in an inquiry like this.
Given the challenges of the situation for me, in terms of my altered schedule and patchwork
treatment of meeting with, teaching, reviewing and reinforcing the learning of new or difficult
terms and tasks, I am quite happy with the results and yet, would challenge myself to do better
in the future. I have a greater understanding of vocabulary instruction and feel much more
confident from the experience and the learning I received myself from my colleagues and my
students through this process.
Matt McClenaghan (2015-2016)