Teacher Work Analysis

If students are not ready for the Formative Period, there will not be a Formative Period. The Formative Period is about building each student’s potential as a learner. This means the teacher needs to:

• Identify the rituals and routines that all students need to be successful learners.
• Identify those factors that might prevent students from becoming more proficient learners and build an experience set that addresses those priority needs.

If teachers cannot do either the identification or experience building, leadership needs to provide immediate ad hoc professional development and ongoing support for the teachers, for the students, and those teachers’ classrooms.

The key to a successful formative experience for all students is the development of a rhythm of student work that enables all students to attend, acquire, organize, and create meaning for all critical learnings and tasks. The work in the Opening Period to prepare all students to attend and acquire effectively makes it possible to begin the development of the effective student work set at the start of the Formative Period — organizing, creating meaning, and assessment experience.

– excerpt from Turning Around Turnaround Schools, Volume 2 – Embracing the Rhythm of the Learner Year

The free tools provided on this site are pulled, in part, from our recent book Turning Around Turnaround Schools, Volume 2 – Embracing the Rhythm of the Learner Year. If you have questions about how to use any of these tools, please feel free to contact us, or check out the book, available on amazon.com.

About Post Author

Frank Desensi

Frank DeSensi is the founder and Chief Innovation Officer of Educational Directions, LLC. which consults with schools and school districts in the southeastern and mid-western United States. A retired educator, Frank spent 35 years in a variety of teaching and administrative positions. He taught at the university, college, secondary, and middle-school levels; worked in the central office as a curriculum specialist; and held both principal and assistant principal positions. From 1993 to 1998, Frank served as a Kentucky Distinguished Educator, helping to turn around schools that were labeled in decline or in crisis under the provisions of the Kentucky Education Reform Act. Frank helped develop the STAR training program for new DE’s and served as a trainer in the Kentucky Leadership Academy. He jointly holds patents for three data-management systems for schools.

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