I-4, Novice, 2nd Grade
Narrative
Emma’s classroom is colorful and cozy. During a visit in early December, Paula, the evaluator, immediately notices several systems on the walls and shelves that are designed to reinforce Emma’s students’ efforts toward the class’s Big Goal—“to read like FOURTH graders.” Paula recalls that Emma’s diagnostic data showed that her students were, on average, almost on grade level at the beginning of the year, and Emma was determined to move them forward more than two grade levels by the end of the year.
As Emma began administering a quiz on similes and metaphors, Paula sat at the back of the room and took some notes on the I-4-related evidence she saw in the room. She wrote:
System—Homework Superstars Tracking Log -notebook that holds stickers for students who complete homework -“10 in a row means we all get to go!”
System—Pathway to BigGoalLand -big poster with a road up a hill -each child’s cut out photo head is in a car and the cars are making their way up the mountain
Paula leaned back and picked up the Homework Superstars Tracking Log. She saw that on the front of the logbook it said “10 in a row means we all get to go” and then a sticky note that said “To the Zoo!” Paula opened the notebook and saw that the pages consisted of students’ names down the left side and dates across the top of each page, with students having earned stickers by their names for completing homework. Paula noticed, however, that the last time stickers were entered into the logbook was late October. The pages covering November and December were blank.
After the class, Paula asked Emma about the notebook. Emma responded,
“Oh yeah, the homework tracker. That’s a great help. When everyone gets ten stickers in a row, we all get to go somewhere together. It’s a great way to harness peer pressure in a good way, I think.”
“But it looks like no one has earned stickers since October?” asked Paula.
“Oh, no, I just haven’t had time to do the sticker thing lately. It’s just been so crazy. But I want to get that going again. It really does help. I think that homework has dropped off lately—I bet that’s why.”
“Can you tell me about the Pathway to Big Goal land poster?” Paula asked.
“Oh yeah. That’s another one I just haven’t really had time to deal with lately. Aren’t those cars great? The idea is that each child will be able to see herself move up that road and I’ll calculate where they should be on the road from their quarterly assessments. We had an assessment a few weeks ago, but I haven’t had a chance to calculate those yet.”
Paula asked, “So how did you decide where to put the cars that are on the road now?”
Emma explained, “Well, that’s their relative position based on their beginning-of year diagnostics. And you know, even though I haven’t moved those according to the test, I do sometimes move someone up when they do a really good job, so they get the idea, I think.”