It is Saturday at 10 a.m. Eastern and we are going to be going over the SLLA-6990 and the Praxis-5412. I'm really excited that you guys are here with me today.
My name is Kathleen Jasper and I'm thrilled to be going over the leadership exams with you today. So we have a lot of prospective leaders who are, you know, working towards this test, but we also have... teachers who are just interested in kind of having a look at this test and seeing if it's something that they want to do.
So all are welcome for this webinar. Again, we are working on the SLLA-6990 and the Praxis-5412. These are leadership exams.
So these are the exams you take when you are trying to become an assistant principal or a principal or something like that. So let me know in the chat if you can hear me okay. I am live on a webinar. If you have not registered for that webinar and want to join that webinar and get the resources I talk about in the webinar, you can go ahead and click the link on social media. It's in the description and you just fill out the form on that page and you'll have a link to watch the live webinar.
You can engage in the chat there and then we will also be sending out emails after the webinar is over with an. offer code and all the resources we talk about today. So just let me know if you can hear me okay in the chat. And if you're on social media, welcome, welcome. I'm just going to check my YouTube page, make sure I am live and I am checking Facebook, making sure I'm live and it's going, let's see.
And I am awesome. So perfect. Now let's get back to the presentation.
So I want to first say a couple of things. The SLLA 6990 is my jam. I love this test.
I love prepping people for this test. I've written several study guides, online courses, things like that for this exam. Now this free webinar will definitely get you started. And some people pass this exam by just using our free stuff. And we have lots of free things for these two exams.
But if you need a little more support and you want to prepare, you know, in a comprehensive way, we do have paid materials. So today we're going to be working from the free study guide that comes with this webinar. So when you signed up, you were taken to a thank you page. On the thank you page were the webinar links and then the study guide that you can download and save to your computer.
There's also a link on that study guide to take you to the paid study guide. This free study guide is just a snippet and it's great. You can use it and use this webinar and pass if you're trying to save money.
But we also have other resources that are very comprehensive. And so I just want to show you those today so that you know you have lots of options. Okay, so let me just share my screen really quickly.
And on our website, we have books and courses for the SLLA 6990 and the Praxis 5412. These exams are identical except for one difference. And I'm going to talk about that when we go over the test specs. So we have the study guide here. And you can buy it as a digital download or you can, let me just share this tab, you can get it on Amazon. There's a button on the website that will take you there.
You can see we have tons of five-star reviews for this book. This has helped thousands of people pass their exam. Now, besides that, we also have, let me go back here, we also have an online course for this exam.
This is super comprehensive. And it comes with the study guide and an audio course. So let me just show you what that looks like really quickly.
The online course, start course here, has, I mean, if you look at this menu over on the left-hand side, you can see there's just so much information. It comes with handouts for the particular section I'm talking about. Then I go through, you know, all the different things. There are tons of videos there on everything. So that's really helpful.
And then of course, we have a comprehensive constructed response section on the online course. You can see these are the handouts there. And then of course, I go through them in this video very specifically. And then one thing that we've added, which I'm really excited about, I want to do more of, is the audio course option.
So when you buy the online course, you get the audio course. So you don't have to buy both. But this is a good way.
Some of you, I'm this way. I like to put my headphones in, go for a walk, vacuum the house. whatever it is. And this is a really great way to do that. So that's, we, we love that we're offering those and I'm going to try to do it for lots of the exams that we have now.
Let me go back really quick. here. You can get just the study guide.
You can get the online course, which includes the study guide and the audio course. Or if you just want to spend $15.99, you can just get the audio course. It's a great companion to the study guide.
But remember, when you get the online course, you get everything. And there's an offer code in the chat that my colleague, Yana, is going to put. that's she's going to put it in the chat for you and um you can go ahead and use that that offer code so don't buy until you use the offer code because you'll get 20 off and that's really helpful especially for the online course because it's a little more expensive so tracy says she bought the study guide well worth it i'm so glad tracy that plus this is going to help you a lot so um that will really really help you so slla 699 or praxis5412 they're the same test. Let me show you what that looks like.
So I'm going to go into our study companions here. Okay, so you know no matter what test I'm prepping for, I will always send you to the ETS study companion. This document is very, very important. It's the document I use to build my materials.
It should be the document that guides your instruction. So you can see here that we have the blueprint. We have six content categories from strategic leadership all the way to community engagement.
It gives you how many questions are in each section. You can see instructional leadership is the biggest one with 27 questions at 17%, obviously, because we need to be instructional leaders first and foremost. That's our job.
But of course, all these others are very important. And then the last section is the constructed response, which is tough. You got to write for constructed response.
essays in 75 minutes. So these are scored separately. So you will take the multiple choice or they call it selected response and you'll have 165 minutes for that.
You can see that right here up at the top. And then that portion of the test will be concluded. So you can't use like any extra time from your selected response into your constructed response. It is two separately timed sections. So once you've hit submit, you finished your selected response.
Then you move into the essay portion or the constructed response. I'm going to do a full constructed response today. So it will help you.
But this is something we need to practice because it is a big task. And of course, you're trying to become a principal or an assistant principal. So this test is not going to be easy, right?
It's going to be more difficult. So we want to make sure we prepare properly. Now, this is the blueprint for the 6-9-9-0.
Now let's have a look at the blueprint for the 5-4-1-2. Notice it is identical, strategic leadership all the way down to community engagement, but it's missing one thing. It's missing the constructed response. For those of you taking the Praxis 5412, it is the same test as the SLLA 6990, except it does not have a constructed response section.
It's all selected response and you have two hours and 45 minutes to complete that. Now, really quickly, I left the constructed response in our 5412 book. because it's very helpful for you to review that. So you get the critical thinking that's really, really important in order to answer the selected response.
So I left it in the book because I just feel like it will better prepare you for the multiple choice section. So you don't have to freak out and worry about it and say, Oh my God, I got to write essays if I'm writing, if I'm doing the Praxis 5-4-1-2, but it does help to become familiar with that because critical thinking, performance-based assessment, you know, writing for the exam is really helpful when studying. Okay, now the second thing I want to tell you is that this assessment, the SLLA 6990 and the Praxis 5412 is aligned with the PSE standards. Those are the professional standards for educational leadership.
So any big test by a big testing company for any state or even the nation is always going to be aligned with a set of national standards. And the national standards for that many states use for educational leadership are the PSELs. Let's have a look at what those look like because it's important you get to know these standards because it's going to help you with the test and it's going to help you with being a leader.
All right, so let's go to... That right here. Okay, so I'm gonna link this up in the email you get from me once the webinar is over So don't worry about trying to download this right now. You will get it I just want to kind of look at it You can see it's a 36 page document and you know, it has a lot of information notice that we have student learning Mission vision and goals ethics and professional norms These are all things that are on the exam and then we get down into the actual standards And you can see this is standard two, ethics and professional norms. All of these words, all of these phrases are in the right answer choices on the exam.
So you don't have to memorize this document. I just recommend using it as supplemental material to help you study for the exam and to help you identify correct answer choices. Because you are going to see on this test that they give you four answer choices and all of them look good. I get that question a lot. I didn't see any answer choice that stood out because they all looked good.
I'm going to talk to you how to find them today. But this will help you kind of discern the correct versus incorrect answer choices on this test that can be very difficult. And there's just some good graphics to understand.
And it'll just help you understand the foundations on this exam. So definitely check out the PSELs. And again, I'm sending you an email about an hour after this webinar is over.
And you will get all the links and things that I'm talking about today. Okay. So one thing that people, I see people asking in the chat, I bought the book, but I want the online course. Well, since the course comes with the book, if you already bought the study guide and you would like to get the course, we will apply your purchase of the book to the online course.
And we do that for anything. All you have to do is send proof of purchase. If you purchased on our website. we can find you.
But if you purchased on Amazon, we can't find you. So we just ask that you send a screenshot of your order and we will send you an offer code that gives you that price off the course. Okay.
So don't worry if you decide you want to upgrade, you can, we will take that price of the book off the course. Okay. All right. So let's get started. We are going to be working from, let me share screen one more time.
I'm always sharing screen. We are going to be working from this free study guide here. Now again, I talked to you a little bit about the paid study guide.
They are different. So this free study guide is five pages. It has 10 problems here.
And then it also has detailed answer explanations. Okay. It's just a snippet.
Now, if you want more, you can order our full study guide. Let me zoom in here. And this is the digital version because it just helps me share it with you guys. But you can see that the entire book is broken up by content category.
Within each content category is just tons of information. I, of course, have the test specs. I always have the test specs for you.
And then I get into all of the information. It's very comprehensive. Now, if you do get the study guide, the full one, please read it.
A lot of people just go straight to the practice test, and that's okay to do. But in order for you to understand... everything on the exam, it's really important that you read the study guide.
And then after that, at the very end, well, after each section, let me show you this really quick. After each section, hang on, let me go back to my table of contents here. Sorry about that.
So like you can see here, strategic leadership and practice questions. After each section, I have 10 problems. that go just with the section you're in. That way you can see like, okay, these are what the questions might look like when, um, when we are, uh, in this section of the exam.
Let me just make sure I'm sharing screen here. Yeah, I am. Okay. I just, I thought maybe I'd stop sharing screen.
Um, so you can see this is section one. We've already gone through all of section one stuff. You know, you read, read, read, you know, all these things.
And then at the end of section one, you get to 10. practice problems with detailed answer explanations. So you can get to know, okay, this is a strategic leadership question. This is an instructional leadership question. This is an ethics leadership question. All right.
And that'll help you there. And then finally, at the end of the book, let me scroll this way so I don't make you guys dizzy. At the end, that's managing operational systems.
Sorry. It is a big book. There are 250 pages in this book. Where are we here? Okay, at the end we have the analysis, which is the constructed response.
You can see I have tons of prompts here for you that are really going to help. I'm going to go through a prompt today. And then, of course, we have the full practice test. So then you get a full practice test at the end with all of the content category questions in there.
And then finally one thing that I love about our books and a lot of people like about our books is that our answer explanations. Certainly give you a lot of information here, but it also tells you what content category they come from. So if you get a question wrong and you see you're getting like five questions wrong out of the strategic leadership, you know you have to go back to strategic leadership. And you can see these Roman numerals here will tell you all about that. OK, but today we're working out of the free study guide, which is great as well.
We're going to cover both SLLA 6990, Praxis 5412. I actually have this on a bigger. thing here. I've pulled out a few questions and then we're going to jump to the constructed response because I find people struggle with that and that can be kind of daunting that task. Okay. So let's have a look at question number one.
So if you have the study guide in front of you, you can go ahead and pull it up. If you don't just follow along with my presentation, no big deal. You can download the free study guide later. I'd rather you watch the presentation here.
Okay. The one thing about the SLLA 6990 and the 5412 is that it is the perfect test to work backwards. You know, I always say work backwards. You always want to start with the answer choices for these scenario type questions. Okay.
Now this question is pretty short, so you could read the question first and it's fine. And it's asking you to kind of define a needs assessment. So we'll do that first, but. When you get to questions like this, where you have this long scenario here and then big answer choices after it, it helps to read the questions first. Let's go back to number one.
So it's saying a needs assessment is a systematic process for. So we're talking about a needs assessment. Remember a needs assessment is when you analyze data, all kinds of data in the school.
It's going to be behavior data, achievement data, maybe surveys. It it kind of does a lot. You'll see a needs assessment in the school improvement plan. It is a way to collect data. So when you see needs assessment, think data.
Very, very important. And as an instructional leader, you are going to be referencing the data first and foremost all the time before you make any decision. Okay, that needs to stay in your head for this exam too. When you are the principal or assistant principal, you don't just go willy-nilly make decisions.
We want to make sure we are data driven and that we are looking over lots of things. And a needs assessment is a great way to start. So let's look at A, determining and addressing needs or gaps.
Now you'll see this a lot. You'll see a word that matches the word in the question. If you do slow down, most likely it's the correct answer.
So determining and addressing needs or gaps between current conditions and desired conditions or wants. This is the key. a needs assessment you're saying what do we need what we need are the desired conditions okay we want you know reading uh scores to go up five percent that's the need what's our current conditions well we're currently at let's say we're at 45 we want to move it to 50 so we're currently at 45 we want to move to 50 the desired conditions also in a needs assessment that's not the only thing you're looking at you're looking at disaggregated data based on subgroup, based on grade level. We are looking at different assessments, maybe their formative assessments versus their summative assessments versus their end-of-the-year state criterion assessments.
So this is a very complex process but if we are going to break it down to what a needs assessment is, A is the correct answer. But let's talk about B, C, and D just so we can have a discussion. be surveying teachers to determine areas of improvement and where to allocate resources notice that um this is actually a good answer if you didn't know a lot like surveying teachers sounds good but here's the thing and i want you to keep in mind about surveys surveys they are there to measure attitudes about things so you would do a survey with teachers to figure out how they feel about a new reading program or how they feel about any new implementation excuse me that you put in place surveys are not going to give you the quantitative data that you need to make every decision. Surveys are qualitative data, meaning that they cannot be quantified in numbers. It's more about looking at, you know, anecdotal data.
But when we're talking about, you know, quantitative data to make decisions about a process, we're going to want to do something more than a survey. So be on the lookout for that. Surveys are certainly appropriate at certain times, but when we are implementing programs, to help increase student achievement. Surveys are usually not the best thing. It can certainly supplement some of the data, but we need those raw numbers.
Where do the percentages lie? Okay. So B is out.
And of course, it's got all the good words here, allocate resources, but B is not the best answer. C, using student achievement data. Okay. I like that. To drive decisions made in the classroom.
Okay. This is a great answer choice. You know, I talk about the good words all the time.
student achievement, decisions based on that achievement is all great, but it is not as comprehensive as this. A needs assistant, a needs assessment measures gaps. Now this word gap here is very important too. As an instructional leader, you are looking at the gap in the bar graphs.
You are looking to see where students, you know, where some students are, maybe your general education students are high and you're. English language learners are a little bit low. Your job is to close the achievement gap.
I talk about that a lot in my leadership videos. So if you see anything on gaps or closing the achievement gap, it is most likely the correct answer. Okay. Let me just check something really quick here.
I wanted to make sure I forgot to turn on my, um, I forgot to turn on my, there we go. Let me just go here and make sure I'm sharing screen. Forgot to put my camera up.
okay we're good all right so um so c is out it's okay not as good as a all right want the best answer and d analyzing resources and determining allocation based on desire student achievement okay this part of the answer choice is good determining allocation based on desired student achievement as educational leaders we have a budget right and so we want to um allocate resources based on the budget and where do we want the increase to come from? Where would those budget resources really work? But we're not going to analyze resources to do that. Be careful. This test is very nuanced.
We're going to analyze the data to do that. And that's why A is better. You don't analyze resources and then give them out.
You look at the data and say, okay, these kids need this. These teachers need that based on the data. Then you send them out.
So again, very nuanced, be careful. This word gap. and desired conditions and current conditions are the best and it's going to lead me to a needs assessment okay all right number three now this is an example of where all four answer choices sound really really good and i like this question because i get these um messages a lot on facebook and youtube and things like that where people say i took the test and every answer choice looked good all right so let's have a look at the answer choices first because This is a scenario question.
I don't want to get lost in this. I first want to see if I can eliminate any answer choices and see if there's one that's a standout. Okay. A, form a committee of experienced teachers to analyze the data and come up with solutions.
All right. That one looks good. I can't really eliminate it because that's what we want to do. This is called shared leadership. It's a big part of the exam.
And of course, you're not making all the decisions alone as a leader. You need to bring in, you know, the custodians. your teachers, staff members, students, parents.
That's why we have student advisory, our school advisory councils. I want to bring in the community. So A looks good.
B, review the SIP and analyze current goals identified in the plan. All right. B is okay, but we're just analyzing current goals. We're not analyzing data. I don't know.
I'm going to put a little X there. I don't love it, but reviewing the SIP is good practice. So I don't hate it.
C. Delegate part of the task to the assistant principal so time can be used efficiently. Okay.
Now with things like this, delegation is part of our job. We cannot do all the things, right? And I am learning to delegate myself and enjoying it a lot in my business, but it's hard when you have done it all yourself. And a lot of leaders have a hard time with delegation, myself included.
And so it's really part of that. But when we talk about delegation on this exam, it's usually attached to aligned with the strengths and the talents of the person. So for example, and this is not real life, you're going to delegate whatever you need to delegate. But on the exam thing, perfect world, you would delegate based on teacher's strengths.
So let's say you're a principal and you want to delegate the social media. You don't want to do the social media. And there's a teacher who is just awesome at social media. Well, you might delegate that to her or him.
So let's say there's a presentation you want to give the students or the teachers about, you know, current situations and where we want to be. You might delegate that presentation out to a teacher because teacher-led presentations always go over much better than the principal standing in the front of the room telling you what to do. And that teacher might be very strong in data analysis and presentation. So typically when we delegate, we want to attach that to a strength. of the person we're delegating to.
I'm just going to put a little x. I don't hate it. I'm going to have to read the question. D, disaggregate the data based on subgroups and analyze achievement gaps and areas of weakness. Okay.
This one here has got good words written all over it. Disaggregate the data. Okay.
First step in anything is you look at the data and you don't just look at it at a meta view. You are, I'm sorry, at a macro view. You want to get down and really disaggregate and get meta on that data.
You want to look at subgroups. You want to look at each specific skill. Is it vocabulary they're struggling with?
Is it comprehension? You want to go deep into the data so you can make the best possible decision. And that's what disaggregate the data means. If you see the word disaggregate the data, star it.
It's probably the correct answer. Then we have based on subgroups. This is also a good word through data analysis. We want to make sure. that we are, you know, looking at the different subgroups.
Now, I always caution people in real life about subgroups. We have to be careful that we don't solely rely on these subgroup labels. And I've seen some problems.
They had some things on the news about principals focusing on subgroups and bringing those subgroups into a presentation and only focusing their efforts on them in the presentation. It was very bad. But anyways.
Subgroups is important for us to have a look at in data analysis, but it's not the only thing. But on this test, it is a good answer choice. And analyze achievement, here's that word again, gaps and areas of weakness. D's got it all. I'm going to circle it.
Let's read the question. The principal of LES High School is working on increasing the curriculum and instructional focus to include a targeted approach. Targeted approach means we need to get meta on that data, right? We need to drill down.
to student subgroups specifically students who are identified as low socioeconomic and ese ese as exceptional student education it could also be special ed same thing what should be the and here's the key you'll see this a lot first step now forming a committee is great reviewing the sip is great delegating part of the task based on someone's strengths is great but the first step you do as an instructional leader is to analyze the data very very closely So anytime you see first step, go to the answer choice that talks about the data. And you can see I had the correct answer choice before even reading the question because it had all the good words and things like that. So please, when you see answer choices that all kind of look good like they do here, zero in on anything that talks about analyzing the data and also disaggregating the data.
And that's why D is the correct answer. Now let's talk about this one really quickly. Now I have seen, especially on the practice tests.
for this exam and the study companion, what they'll do is you've got this big old scenario with a data set. And this tends to get people like, oh my gosh, you know, this is a lot. Still go with the answer choices first, because it's going to help you. Sometimes you don't even have to look at the chart.
I'm not saying all the time, but sometimes the answer choices are written in a way where you don't have to get lost all up in here and, and lose. time and all of that. So let's go straight to the answer choices before touching anything.
All right. So A, should the school investigate other reading programs that may maximize reading gains for all student groups? All right.
That's okay. B, how can it, how can the achievement gap and the reading performance between total groups and the subgroup be closed? Closing the achievement gap is our number one goal.
We want to make sure that while we continue to help our high flyers fly high, we want to bring those who are scoring low up, up, up, up, up to close the achievement gap, okay? I want you to visualize a bar graph. And in the bar graph, you've got a big bar that's going way up to the sky, and it's looking good, and then you have a lower bar here, right?
And what you want to do as a school leader is take that low bar and pull it up. We don't want to bring the high bar down. That's not closing the achievement gap. Closing the achievement gap is bringing the low bar up to that high bar. And that is our number one job.
I love B. Let's look at C. What factors are most important in promoting improvement in the school's overall performance in reading? Okay. It's all right.
Not as good as B. D. How many students are in each subgroup and how does that impact the data? It's okay, we talk about data, but it doesn't really matter how many students are in each subgroup.
I mean, possibly, but what we're looking at here is performance. So regardless of how many kids are on there, the performance is the performance. So let's just read the question, but B is the correct answer, and I didn't have to look at any of this because it had all the good words in it. But, of course, on test day, you just want to check and make sure. So we have...
I'm going to continue to work backwards here. Start with the question stem first. So continue to go up, work backwards.
So we're here. After reviewing this data, the middle school principal should place the highest priority key on answering which of the following questions. The highest priority here needs to be how do we get our low socioeconomic students up to the same level as our general education students who don't... who are not quote labeled as low SES.
Okay. Now, again, we don't want to bring in all the students who come from poverty and target them in a way that's going to embarrass them or anything like that. But we just know as leaders, this particular subgroup and not everybody in that subgroup, you're going to have plenty of students who come from poverty who are really good and high flyers. It's that's the problem with labels.
We tend to think, Oh, wow. He's from this side of town or he comes from low socioeconomic or he's this or he's that. So he just can't do the things the other students can do.
Absolutely not. This is just a way to kind of look at the data and say, okay, overall, our low SES kids are performing at lower rates. How can we support them to push them up?
That's what that is for. And we want to close that achievement gap. So B is the correct answer. But I always caution, please be careful about subgroups and labeling. because it can be very detrimental to student progress.
All right, let's take a look at number eight. So on your study guide, we're skipping ahead a little bit. Let's look at the answer choices because this right here is too much.
I wanna see if I can eliminate anything. All right, A, provide differentiated instruction that builds on students'unique strengths and experiences. All right, I like differentiated instruction and building on their strengths and experiences. All right, B, incorporate project-based learning activities into the curriculum.
Okay, A and B sound like teacher strategies. You know, teachers would differentiate the instruction and teachers would incorporate project-based learning, although we could as leaders require it or push towards it or provide professional development in it. So I'm not real sure, but let's have a look.
C, develop individualized performance criteria to drive instruction and assessment for each student. Okay, C sounds good, but let me talk to you about this one. Individualized performance data. That means you are giving students individual grades like based on their own individual needs, right? And the reason why this is problematic is because at the end of the year, they have to take a statewide assessment and everybody's graded the same.
It's a standardized assessment. They might get accommodations if they have a learning disability or something like that, but the benchmarks are the same. So we don't want to develop individualized performance criteria.
We want to keep the criteria or the standards where they are. and develop individualized instruction to help them meet that. So be careful. Remember on the number one, we had some nuances there. So just be sure you have a look and see.
We don't want individualized performance criteria. The performance criteria is the standard. It's up here.
We never lower it. Okay? We just want to support to bring those kids up. So I don't like C. D. Create and implement standards aligned independent study programs.
Okay. Here's the problem with this one. Standards aligned is like, I love standards aligned. Everything should be aligned to the standards, right? And we want to promote that with our teachers, just like what we do as leaders.
There are national standards. We have our district goals, state goals. We're all aligned to that.
And all of those are aligned to a set of standards, a set of academic standards. But the problem with this one is independent study programs. Usually independent study is homework, right?
They go home and do it. It's a fancy word for homework. If students are struggling, and typically these questions are about students who are struggling, independent study programs are not going to work.
Let's read the question. Right now, I'm between A and B. Let's read the question. After a needs assessment, okay, so the leader conducted a data analysis.
The leadership team has decided to focus on certain subgroups within the school, specifically ELLs, English language learners, and low socioeconomic students. The needs assessment data show These students tend to perform at substantially lower levels than their peers, both in the classroom and on standardized tests. Okay. So we've got this group who's struggling to perform. The leadership team can best support teachers, okay, who develop, sorry, best support teachers who serve these students by providing teachers with professional development aimed at.
Okay. So I said before, these sound like teacher practices. And we want to make sure that if we're asking teachers to do these practices, we're giving them professional development. So now we're between A and B, all right?
So which professional development would help us with students who struggle? Well, right away, differentiated instruction, right? Because you're going to have ELLs who have specific needs because they are English language learners. So they're going to need support.
ESOL support, they're going to need, you know, other things. We're going to need to teach teachers about that. And then low socioeconomic students are going to need something different probably. And then let's have a look at this that builds on unique strengths. Here's something that doesn't get talked about a lot.
We think when students are failing on their standardized assessments or not meeting the benchmark that they are like less than, right? It's just in your head because you're like, well, the score is here. They're not getting the score.
So they're not as good, right? But the thing is these students, students who are ELL have a lot of other strengths. Students who come from low socioeconomic backgrounds have strengths as well. And rather than thinking of it in a deficit way, like, oh these kids can't do this, we want to think of it where are their strengths and how can we maximize using those strengths to help push them towards academic achievement. So that's why I like A, the best, that build on students'unique strengths and experiences.
Remember, you have students who came here from another country who are learning the language in a high school or in a middle school. That is some crazy stuff. That is really hard.
So they are like tough kids. They know how to overcome adversity and scary situations. So these kids can do a lot. They may not be performing on a standardized assessment. in their second language that they just started learning five seconds ago, but they have other strengths that you can use.
So, and, but that's really hard to do. So we have to provide that professional development. So A is looking good. B, incorporate project-based learning.
Project-based learning is okay, but we have students struggling here. So that's why differentiated instruction is the best thing here. All right. All right.
I'm off my soapbox about subgroups and like labels and all of that. Make sure you come from a... an abundance thinking, not a deficit way of thinking.
No more, oh, they can't do this, they can't do that. Where are their strengths? Oh, you know, they might be scoring low on this assessment in English, but look at what else they can do.
How can we use that to help propel them forward? All right. All right. So I'm going to go ahead and take a quick break.
Stop sharing my screen here and just see what we've got going on in the questions. Let's see. Michelle, all of Kathleen's study guides are awesome.
Oh, thank you. All right. We've got the offer code.
Do you have an option for the online course? Okay. Any questions about the content that I'm talking to you about today? Just to make sure you guys need anything.
All right. So that's those questions I was going on going with today. Those are multiple choice.
They call them selected response because you might also get a choose all that apply. You know what I mean? So That's why they call it selected response rather than multiple choice, but it's just a fancy word for multiple choice.
Now we're going to get into the constructed response section. Now, the same thing goes with the constructed response. We want to work backwards and start with the task.
I'm going to show you how to do that in a minute. You don't want to get all wrapped up in the scenario, and then you have to go down and read the task, and then you go back up to the scenario. It's too much.
So we're going to start with the task first. and then read because it sets the purpose for what we are doing. Now a couple things about the constructed response.
It's worth 25% of the overall score. So you got to work the constructed response. You got to make sure you grab some points there.
Does it have to be perfect? Absolutely not. You can have some mistakes in there. They know this is a timed assessment. They're not going to dock you, you know, tons and tons of points if you have like one grammar mistake.
But if you have a lot of grammar mistakes and it interferes with the learning, that's the one thing that... with the reading, that's where you would get docked. But the focus is really on the content and using specific examples.
I'm going to show you that in a minute. A lot of people do these very generalized responses and they don't get into the specifics. We need to get specific and use those specific details to support what we are trying to say.
All right. And I'm going to dig into that in a second. I've got a question here from Katie.
Do you have any advice for choose all that apply type of selected response? I tend to overthink those and either miss some or include too many. Okay. The thing with the choose all that apply, they're very tricky because you have to get all of them.
You don't get partial credit. So let's say it's choose all that apply and there are three correct answer choices out of five. And let's say you got two of them.
You don't get the points. You have to choose all three of the correct ones. So one of the things is... that you can do is the backwards design that I just showed you. Typically the non, the not correct answer choices or the, let's speak English Kathleen, incorrect answer choices in those select all that apply, they will typically stand out and be wrong.
Also look for similarities, right? If it's choose all that apply then you want to see if there are answer choices that are similar to one another and that will help you there. Those are tough. There are not a lot of them on the exam.
Remember, you do not need 100% on this exam. A D, a D will get you through this exam. So if you miss a couple selected response ones that are choose all that apply, that's okay. Move on to the ones that you can answer really, really well. All right.
But those are tough. You just got to kind of work through them. But the backwards, backwards, work backwards.
scenario helps. Okay. All right. Let's hop back over to my presentation and let's have a look at my constructed response.
Now, for those of you in the webinar, I'm going to send you this practice constructed response. So you'll get a link to, to download this as well in the email that will happen immediately after this is over. If you're watching in the future, you've already received it.
Okay. So now notice. and I apologize for all the text on the page because this is a presentation and I don't, it's kind of annoying when you're doing a presentation and there's so much text, but that's what the test is. Okay. So you can see we have this giant scenario here and a data set.
And then we have three things that we need to do. You need to start here. Okay.
You need to start at the task because then what you can do on your scratch paper or your dry erase board, depending on where you're testing. You can just map out what you're going to do. I would have a number one and leave a bunch of space, a number two, leave a bunch of space, and a number three, leave a bunch of space. So let's figure out what we're being asked to do before we read this giant scenario. Number one, conduct a nuanced analysis of the provided mathematics achievement data.
Discuss ways to implement practices to measure student progress throughout the school year. All right, so those of you who are becoming instructional leaders, You got to be fast on your feet. What you're going to do here is you're going to summarize just a few pieces of the data.
You do not need to go through every line, every column, every increase or decrease. It can be something general. So I would put on my little scratch sheet, summarize data for number one.
And then the second part of that, make sure you're here. Discuss ways to implement practices to measure student progress throughout the school year. Well, how do we measure student progress throughout the school year? We do that through formative assessment. So right away on my map, I'm going to put formative assessment.
Boom. Number one is mapped and done. Let's go to number two.
Formulate a comprehensive strategy for engaging teachers in this process so they are properly trained, keyword here, to use data to make instructional decisions. So we just said we're going to use formative assessment, but can we just be like, okay, teachers use formative assessment. You're good, right?
No. If we want it done with fidelity. We need to make sure we are training teachers with professional development.
So one of the things that this test focuses on in the test specs is differentiated professional development because like students when we're teachers what do we do? We differentiate our instruction. Well as leaders we can't just do a one-size-fits-all.
We have teachers who know about formative assessments already and giving them a training on You know, the basics of formative assessment is a colossal waste of time and they will not like that. But giving them a training on advanced formative assessment would not be a waste of time. But then we have novice teachers in there.
We have teachers who just started this year and they have no idea what formative assessment even is. So a basic training on formative assessment would help them. So be sure if you're going to use the professional development angle, which we are because we need to train teachers in formative assessment. we make sure we add the word differentiated professional development or scaffolded professional development because it's in the specs, number one, and we want to use the words in the specs. And number two, we need to differentiate our instruction as leaders, just like we did when we were teachers.
So for number two on my map, I'm going to put differentiated professional development, and I might even put basic for the new teachers, advanced for the veterans. and just leave it at that moving on to three because we're just mapping quickly for our um for our task here because we still have to read and we still have to write right so now i have i'm looking down on my map or my notes for number three anticipate potential challenges and complications in implementing your plan and i should have put here and uh express how you will um combat those okay but i'm going to do that in my writing anyways well what are some challenges always Time, money, buy-in, anything. Those are basically the three things.
Time, obviously. How are teachers going to do this professional development? Their schedule is already full.
Where's the money coming from? I mean, as instructional leaders, these are things you're going to have to think about all the time. And so we need to make sure we anticipate those and have a plan to combat those barriers or to overcome those barriers and challenges, okay?
So number one, we are just summarizing the data and we're going to talk about formative assessment and how we can use that to measure student progress throughout the school year and then make instructional decisions doing that. Two, comprehensive strategy for engaging teachers is going to be differentiated professional development and I would say training on how to, I would use common assessments here. I'm going to talk to you about that in a minute. We would train the teachers on how to build common formative assessments so that all the teachers are using the same thing so they can get together in their PLCs, professional learning communities, and not only analyze the data, but analyze the same data. I'm going to analyze the data from my formative assessment.
You just gave the same formative assessment. How did your kids do? Oh, they did better than my kids. What were you doing? What did you do?
Well, I did this. Oh, cool. I'm going to do that now. Notice that having a common assessment and a data analysis together in discussion is going to help us become better.
But we need to train them to do that. And then three, anticipate potential challenges. I'm going to say time and also new teachers.
Let's just say on our staff, we've hired a lot of new teachers, which is the reality in most schools. There is a teacher shortage. So I'm going to say time and...
the amount of new teachers on staff who need to be trained in this area. Okay. That's what I'm going to do. Now let's just read the question here just to be sure, but I already have my plan. I already know what I'm going to do, but let's see here.
As an aspiring school leader, you are assigned the task of evaluating school improvement plan aimed at elevating student achievement in, okay, we're talking about mathematics. So we're going to be talking about the math team. The most recent performance data in mathematics for grades six through eight is below. and you can see it's here so we have overall students meeting we have 55 percent in sixth grade 48 and 7th and 51 and 8th typically meeting is usually 50 around 50 across all schools across all states in public ed i've looked at lots of performance data we try so hard to get above that 50 or 60 or 70 and we can't we're always at 50 but we shouldn't stop trying now we have our special education kids who are 32 percent 28% and 35%. So they are significantly lower.
Then we have our low socioeconomic standards, 44, 41, and 46. Not as low as a special education, but still. Not there. And then we have our general education kids who are meeting.
And then we have English learners again, who are low. Well, this is the same kind of thing that happens all the time. Typically special education students who come from poverty and English language learners are going to be a little bit lower.
But again, remember not every kid in the special education column is going to be performing lower. You might have a kid here who's doing great, who's way, way past. They're not just meeting expectations, they're exceeding. And you might have kids in here.
and you might have kids here all exceeding expectations but again we're just looking at this as a general baseline all right and then it says here the extant school improvement plan incorporates new mathematics curriculum tailored professional development blah blah blah and then it's asking us what to do here so we got it let's move into our actual writing okay so we're going to talk about number one first conduct a nuanced assessment of the data. So we're going to summarize the data and then we're going to discuss ways to implement practices. This is going to be a three paragraph constructed response. Number one is going to be my first paragraph. I need to summarize the data and tell you how I'm going to do formative assessment.
Let's have a look. All right. So the first part is going to be the summarization of the data.
The data set reveals substantial disparities in mathematical performance across diverse student subgroups. That's just an intro section, right? And now see this for instance, or for example, now I'm getting specific. I didn't just say, oh, some groups are low and some groups are high. I got to get specific.
Special education students manifest a particularly low achievement rate of 28 to 35%, depending on the grade level. So I grabbed some of that data in there. You could just say special education students in sixth grade are 7% lower than the general ed kids.
However you want to say it, it doesn't matter. Just summarize pieces of the data. Similarly, and now I'm getting another specific detail, English language learners and students from low socioeconomic backgrounds also underperform compared to general education students. Again, a specific detail. So I got a little percentage here.
I talked about the different subgroups. I got specific. Very important on this, okay?
And then now I'm going to the second part of that task. What are you going to do about it? How are you going to meet their needs?
Okay, to meet the needs of these students throughout the academic year, we will implement department-wide formative assessments. Now I'm going to explain formative assessments, and then I'm going to get specific again. Notice I go general, specific, general, specific.
This approach uses periodic low-stakes assessments and student self-assessments to monitor progress, provide real-time feedback that can be used for instructional adjustment. If you don't have this kind of wording, of course I got my doctorate in educational leadership so it's real easy for me to kind of come up with this, you could just say formative assessments are a valuable tool in monitoring progress with students. That's it.
And then now I'm going to get specific. In addition, math teachers will use their weekly professional learning communities to build common formative assessments. Notice now I didn't just say formative assessments. Then I brought in, okay, we're going to bring the teachers into their PLTs.
They're going to build formative assessments together. And then I explain why it's important. Building common formative assessments will help the math team build continuity throughout the department and will ensure effective data analysis and decision making. Okay.
Task number one is done. There are a few sentences here you could leave out. You don't have to have it be this big, okay? But what did we do here for what was the first task?
First task was conduct a nuanced analysis, which we did right up here. We kind of summarized what's going on. The second part was discuss ways to implement practices to measure.
Well, we did. We are going to meet the needs of these students. I probably should to measure and to measure their progress.
I would probably, well did I say progress monitoring? I think I did. Yes, monitor progress right here.
I might want to include measure progress, the word measure, because in this, now that I'm thinking about it, in number one it says to measure student progress. I might want to grab that whole thing and say, to measure student progress throughout the year, we will implement formative assessments. That just brings it back and makes it more specific. and shows the grader who's grading my essay that I am answering that, but this is fine the way it is, but you know, I'm always thinking about revisions constantly. All right.
And so, and then I get specific about how they're going to use their PLCs to build common formative assessments and all of that, and we're done. Okay. Now what's the second bullet or the second task? Formulate a comprehensive strategy for engaging teachers in this process. So we said they're going to build common, common formative assessments in their PLCs, but Right here, the word trained means I got to figure out professional development.
So paragraph number two is going to be all about professional development. Let's have a look. Okay, the next step is to implement a comprehensive strategy for teacher engagement in this process. That's just an intro sentence. You don't even need it.
You could start here. I've seen lots of constructed responses that are great that just don't even give you an intro sentence. I did it here, but you could just be like... Boom. Implementation will include professional development and data literacy and effective PLCs.
Perfect. So I've got professional development, which I talked about training in data literacy and effective PLCs. And then I bring it back to where teachers will learn to design common assessments as a team and disaggregate the formative assessment data.
These assessments produced to make instructional decisions. I use the term assessments a lot. I might want to say exams, tests. something like that, people say, well, what if I use the same word over and over again?
It's fine. You're talking about assessments. So you're going to say assessments. You're talking about students.
So you're going to say students. It's okay. If I went back now that I'm reading this again, of course I wrote this last night, but if I were to go back, I might change it to common formative exams, common formative checks, something like that, but don't worry about it.
It is fine. So not only did I tell you, that we're going to do a professional development, then I get a little specific in what that professional development looks like. Common assessments, to show them how to disaggregate data, blah blah blah. Now I'm going to get even more specific about the professional development, okay?
I've got it here. The professional development will be teacher-led, right? With two respected teachers from team administration for the training.
That always helps. Teacher-led professional development shows the reader of your essay that you understand that teacher-led professional development is much more effective than the principal coming in and saying, you will do this, right? When a teacher who's had success says, hey, I did this in my classroom and it works really good. I'm going to show you guys how to do it.
Most teachers will listen and be more open than if the admin team comes in and demands things. We know that for sure. And then I might want to include here, just saying this. I said implementation will include professional development.
I might say differentiated professional development or scaffolded professional development, but it's going to come up in my next paragraph, so it's all good. And then I have administration will be available to support. And then I have a little bit here to support our new teachers.
Novice teachers will be paired with instructional coaches skilled in data-driven instruction. So I am addressing my new teachers here. Okay.
I might want to say one more sentence like I talked about in the beginning. New teachers will be given basic common assessment professional development and our veteran teachers will attend professional development on advanced common assessment formative assessments. Okay, that might just help but this is fine the way it is. We don't have to make it perfect. We just got to get a three even a two is okay.
We just need to grab some points here. All right. Now it's the third part, which is anticipating potential challenges, right?
We always want to do that. When we are leaders, we want to go, this sounds like a great idea. What's the challenge?
My old principal who brought me in as a teacher and then again as an assistant principal would do that to me all the time. He'd be like, I'd have this great idea. And he's like, did you think about this?
Did you think about this? Did you think about this? And I was always like, you come from a place of no. Why do you always come from a place of no? But he was right.
He was a logistics genius. He knew where the... bottlenecks were going to happen he knew that my idea was going to fall flat on its face and he always held my feet to the fire on that and i got better about anticipating challenges so that's what this is about here so anticipating challenges and barriers to this process is essential this is another intro sentence you don't have to say that you can start right here the two biggest barriers to this plan are time constraints and lack of experience within the department okay time is always time time time is always the biggest one So now I'm going to get specific. To combat time constraints, we will use budget reallocations to fund substitute teachers who can relieve regular math faculty weekly, providing them with the needed time for their PLCs. So this works really well here.
I said I want to train teachers, right? When am I going to train them? After school?
On Saturdays? They don't want to do that. That's not when they want to do their professional development.
So as a leader, I'm going to look in the budget and I'm going to say, okay, we're going to get you a sub on. every third Wednesday of the month. Okay? You're not going to teach in your regular class.
You're going to go with your professional learning community and you guys are going to work on this stuff. And teachers love that. You got to find the money. And there's not a lot of money, but if you're going to do something this big, you got to give it the time. And remember, you can do whatever you want in this essay because it's not real and you don't have a budget and you don't have anybody yelling at you that you can't do it.
So do it. So you're going to bring in subs. And this also ensures faculty are getting paid for their time. Another specific detail. This helps with buy in along with pairing.
And then I say here, along with pairing novice teachers with those who are experienced. Remember, I talked about that. here in my second paragraph, so I'm referencing it here in my third, we will implement a scaffolded professional development approach beginning with basic data literacy and progressing to advanced instructional strategies. Okay, I knew I had written that somewhere. So now I'm adding to the professional development and this is going to, we did two things, right?
We said time constraints and lack of experience. Well, the time constraints is bringing in the subs and the lack of experience is the differentiated professional development. We're going to give the newbies the new stuff and we're going to give the veterans the tough stuff and we're going to move the newbies up towards the tough stuff just like we would with our students. And then here just some support. This will be differentiated so all teachers professional development needs are met.
We want to meet the needs of our veterans and meet the needs of our novice teachers. Finally, the administrative team will be dedicated in supporting the faculty of this implementation. We don't need this here but it's just a nice one to say, hey what are we going to do as an admin to support the teachers? All right.
All right. I can't believe it. It's 11 o'clock and I am done. Now I'll take a few questions. Let me just go to my, lots of questions here.
How many constructed response questions in 75 minutes? Four. You got to do it four times.
Now, not everyone is going to have three tasks to it. Some of them will have just two bullets, but I did a hard one here because I wanted to show you, but just what I like to do is I take each bullet. and I make it its own paragraph and I just hammer that until it's all answered and then I do the next bullet as the next paragraph.
What about the use of instructional coaches in the school building? Is that just as powerful as teacher-led? Absolutely. Look, I love teacher-led professional development because that's what I did as an assistant principal.
I worked with PLCs and I grabbed a bunch of teachers that I thought would be good. I have this funny story. I had them. I had the the baseball coaches.
I really wanted, we were trying to, to implement, um, using the test specs and planning, uh, using data and all this stuff in the math department. And we got the baseball coaches who are typically those who, I mean, I'm being stereotypical, but at my school, you know, they participated and they were awesome, but they were not like, I want to lead the professional development. You know, they just come to the faculty meetings and like do what they needed to do. So we got the baseball coaches and it wasn't my idea to do it. It was, um, my.
colleague who was the instructional, who was the APC. She's like, I'm going to get the baseball coaches to lead the professional development. And she did an awesome job.
She trained them to lead the professional development so that they would be really good. And you wouldn't believe the buy-in when we had the baseball coaches up there leading the professional development, talking about data, all this stuff. Everyone's like, oh, I'll do that. And if I had stood up there or she had stood up there and said it, they would have ignored us. So it was brilliant.
I love teacher-led professional development, but instructional coaches, absolutely. Anything. You can use anything.
Just defend it. My struggle with responses is that I've been too general in my response. Yeah, that's all you got to do is add one sentence, for example, and give me an example.
That'll bring in the specifics. You don't have to get into a whole other paragraph. Go general and then say, for example, the PLCs will be teacher-led. We will get somebody from the math department who is well-liked to deliver. That's specific.
Or, For example, we will use PLCs. Notice that the professional learning communities was not mentioned in the question. I brought that in as a specific detail.
You just need a few specifics or the specific data. For example, the students in this category are scoring low. Therefore, we will target them using this instructional strategy, whatever it is.
All right. Can you display three sides again, your response to each paragraph? Katie, I'm going to send them to you in an email. you're going to get the responses in an email. So don't worry about that.
You want to see that, that essay that I just wrote and you want to look at it. I'm sending it to you in an email in about 30 minutes. So just be on the lookout, check your spam.
Sometimes my emails go to spam and then take it from the spam and drag it into your main inbox. So you never miss an email from me. So you'll get that along with the offer code.
Okay. All right. No problem, Katie.
Thank you. Okay. So I'm on time.
This is amazing. Does anybody have any other questions? Let me just go over a couple more things.
Number one, you're getting an email once this is over. If you're watching on social media, there's a link in the description for you to sign up. You'll get that email.
Number two, we worked from the free study guide today, but of course there are the paid study guides. Number three, I want to show you some free resources here. Number three, my YouTube channel. Let's have a look at that. I have a whole playlist on my YouTube channel just for leadership.
Okay. Now in this playlist, there are obviously, let me go. Where's my SLLA.
Where are you? Okay. This is from an old webinar. It's going to play here.
Let me just press okay we're stopping there all right um this playlist has all of these different videos here okay i also have an assistant principal writing pool task here um principal pool task writing this is when you have to write on the spot sometimes like i had to take the leadership exam and then i had to do an additional writing exam for my district becoming an ap in my district is really difficult so this is an old webinar but a lot of people use it and it's helped a lot of people so check out that I will link up all of this in the email so you can go straight there. So the YouTube is awesome. Then also, let me go back. Let me go.
No, let's go. Hang on here. Let's stop sharing there. Let me go to YouTube. Let me go to my channel really quickly.
Sorry. Another thing that you can see on my YouTube channel is leadership. Um, where are we?
YouTube. There we are. Uh, I have a leadership, um, playlist.
Sorry. I'm fumbling over my words today. Leadership playlist, which is, it has a bunch of videos on, um, how to answer your interview questions as a leader.
So there are a bunch of questions on, you know, a bunch of help on, you know, what do you say when they ask you this in your leadership interview? What do you say when they ask you that? So it really, really helps a lot.
And of course, I can't find it right this second because I'm live and I'm looking for it, but it is a how to become a school leader. Ah, here it is. School leadership.
There we go. It's going to play. So let's just stop it from playing.
Okay. School leadership. Okay.
Not. Okay. um i've got the praxis slla in there as well and then i've got these other videos in fact yana if you're listening um let's link this up in the email because it's got everything so this school leadership has the slla it's got the work backwards strategy and then it's got assistant principal tips should i get a phd jobs beyond the classroom it's got a bunch of stuff there and an old webinar and then of course assistant principal interview tips so that'll help you there The other thing I have is TikTok.
I'm having a lot of fun on TikTok. I'm doing a lot of different things here. So you can follow me on TikTok. Also our Facebook page has tons of resources here. You can see I'm live here, but we have, you know, blogs, videos, all of that really, really important.
And we also have a leadership Facebook group. So I'll link all of that in the email so you can just click the links and it'll take you straight there. Okay.
So If you need more, let us know, info at KathleenJasper.com. If you'd like to get the study guide, you can do that on the website. We're going to link up that email with the offer code and all of that. Somebody's asking me, can I get the discount on Amazon?
Unfortunately, we cannot discount on Amazon. We can't give discount codes. It won't let us through KDP.
So with the physical book, you can't apply the 20% off. But it's certainly worth it. The physical book will get shipped to you in two days. So it's kind of like... We wrote the book, we're in charge of the book, but they're in charge of the pricing.
So I apologize for that. Can you say again how we show proof of physical study guide to access more? Sure.
So let's say you bought the physical study guide on Amazon. Just shoot us an email at info at KathleenJasper.com and include a screenshot of your order. Make sure your name is visible and just show us that you bought it. You can scratch out your address and all that.
And we'll take that. And then we'll send you back an offer code that you can use to get that off the course. So that'll reduce the price. So you're not buying the book again. So you can totally do that.
And lots of people do. And we're happy to honor that. Okay. Let's see here. Can you display the three slides?
I think we're good. Use her YouTube channel to pass the free response. Yes, Gary, use my YouTube channel. Take Gary's advice.
Go to my YouTube channel and look at the constructed response there. Thank you, Gary. All right, everybody. I hope you have a wonderful Saturday. You've done a lot today.
Get the resources you need and then go sit by the pool and have a margarita or whatever you need to do. Okay.