The Extraordinary Educators Podcast
Best practices, tips, and stories to help you be extraordinary in your classroom and beyond, featuring Curriculum Associates' Manager, Voice of the Customer, Hayley Browning.
The Extraordinary Educators Podcast
Data Isn't Just Numbers with Lloyd Jones
Ever wondered how data can spark a transformative change in a student's educational journey? Tune into our enlightening conversation with Lloyd Jones, Associate Vice President of Content and Implementation at Curriculum Associates, to uncover the secrets. Lloyd shares tried-and-true strategies to harness the power of data for fostering stronger relationships and building trust with students. He provides valuable insights on how teachers can utilize data to recognize students' strengths and initiate productive conversations about areas that need attention. Lloyd emphasizes that knowing the child is a critical factor when it comes to data discussion and confidence-building. This episode is all about understanding the significance of relationships and trust that encourage students to take learning risks.
The second half of the episode ventures into ways educators can keep the flame of inspiration burning. From connecting with us on social media to offering feedback or even becoming a guest on our show, we're all about fostering a supportive community. We delve into the essence of being extraordinary, spreading this powerful message, and celebrating our amazing production team who breathe life into this podcast. So gear up for an episode that promises impactful insights on data utilization, community building, and inspiration for educators. Don't miss out!
Read about seeing students beyond their data: CurriculumAssociates.com/Blog/collecting-good-student-data
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Have feedback, questions, or want to be a guest? Email ExtraordinaryEducators@cainc.com to connect with us!
Curriculum Associates presents the Extraordinary Educators Podcast with host Danielle Solvon and Sarah Liberus your tips, best practices and successes to improve your teaching and leadership and drive student growth and learning. We're here for you.
Speaker 2:Hey everyone, it's Sarah and hello, this is Danielle. Welcome back to the Extraordinary Educator Podcast, and with us today we have Lloyd Jones, one of my colleagues, who is the Associate Vice President of Content and Implementation here at Curriculum Associates, and he is talking to us about confidence and data.
Speaker 1:Yes, so important in how the two can go hand in hand, and really what it comes down to at the end of the day is what we've talked about so much on this podcast building relationships and trust with your students and so Lloyd shares lots of strategies and tips to really use your data to help build confidence with your students and why that's so important in terms of them taking risks in your classroom.
Speaker 2:Yes, so here is our conversation with Lloyd.
Speaker 1:Welcome, Lloyd. It is so great to see you. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Speaker 3:Thanks, Sarah, I'm looking forward to talking to everybody.
Speaker 2:So, lloyd, what have you been working on thinking about recently?
Speaker 3:One thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is how data can help kids with their confidence in the classroom, whether it's a math classroom, what's your language arts classroom, I find that the more children can know where they're doing well and where they need some support, the more confident they'll be when it comes to discourse, conversations, when it comes to thinking about texts that they had just read.
Speaker 2:I mean, I love that. So let's dig in a little bit more. How do you think data can build confidence? What are some of the steps that educators can start to think about to help students build the confidence around their data?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah. So I think children need to know where they're doing well. I mean, I think that's one of the biggest things that I see. When I was teaching in the classroom my students who were struggling, I always wanted to make sure that they understood where they had strengths, where they were doing well, because that really they're. Oh my gosh, you know I'm struggling with this one thing, but I'm also good at these things, and every child is good at certain things. So I think the more we can help children understand where their strengths are, the more it can boost their confidence when it comes to tier one instruction.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. In the classroom, what does that look like for our teachers, who are listening? How can they help students understand what they're good at? Are you like individual conversations or do you have other strategies they can use to really try to instill that confidence?
Speaker 3:Oh, all the above, whether the data is coming from assessments, whether formal and informal assessments, whether it's coming from just classroom observations, whether it's coming from sitting down next to that child and finding out where their strengths are. I think that's just ways to collect data. Data isn't just numbers. It's not just looking at the colors on a screen. It's so much more. We have to look at the whole child. We have to look at the child's reactions to different situations in the classroom and based on all those inputs of data, the teacher can really instill that confidence in the child.
Speaker 2:So, thinking about when you were in the classroom, what are some ways that you would support your students, because I know you taught middle school listeners. He was a great middle school teacher, math teacher so what are some ways that you remember that you helped students build confidence around their math data?
Speaker 3:Trying to reach every child every day. When I'm walking around the classroom trying to kneel down to see what they're working on, how they're doing with every single problem, whether it's a struggling child or whether it's a child who's doing really well. I wanted to make sure that I knew how every single child was doing in the classroom, so I would build that into the lessons. I would give problem solving situations where I would have some time to walk around the classroom and have those individual conversations and especially when you saw a struggling child that's doing really well with the problem oh my gosh I would camp out there and talk to them and really build their confidence up for the next time where they might be possibly struggling.
Speaker 1:That's a great segue to the next question I was going to ask you, which is what about discussing sort of challenges or areas that a student needs to focus on more? Do you apply those same principles I heard you talking about monitor student work, giving them feedback in the moment Anything else you do to help students really identify what they are working on?
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, yeah. So one of the places to start is tell me what you know. Tell me if we were so. For example, I was a sixth grade mathematics teacher and if they were given a task where they didn't even know where to start, we'd start to break the problem down and really talk about what they do know, or talk about some prerequisite knowledge, just so they could get some things right before they really start digging into where they're having difficulty within that mathematical task.
Speaker 2:We just talked about middle school strategies, and often times in our travels I know we hear from a lot of different educators saying that they struggle with sharing data with students. What are some strategies that you've seen that work really well with even kindergarten Students and kindergarten educators? Like some universal things about helping to make sure that students, no matter how old they are, can still build their confidence around data?
Speaker 3:I find that if the more you know the child, the easier it is to talk about data, and then I'm you know I'm not telling teachers anything that I already know the more outside things you know out of the outside of the academia that you know about the child, the easier it is to lead into conversations about what they may or not know about the math content, what they may or not know about the reading content. Finding some way to connect with them before you get into the academic topics can be really helpful.
Speaker 1:Yes, we've talked a lot in this podcast about how everything comes down to relationships and trust, and that was the perfect time of the school year To really get to know your students, build those relationships and and earn their trust so that when you do have Conversations that could be uncomfortable, you know they go smoothly. So thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, yeah, and actually that reminds me of coaching. That is why I became a middle school coach, because coaching takes a lot of time. So one of the ways I found to connect with my middle schoolers was become a middle school track and cross-country coach. Oftentimes I found that those relationships that I was building as a coach Help me in the classroom, and it was just a great way to connect with the students when we got to things that maybe they had some struggles with in mathematics.
Speaker 2:That is totally my experience as well. I was a middle school softball coach, so I felt the same way that I was building relationships with them outside of school as well as inside of school. So before we leave, thinking about building confidence with data For our listeners, is there one? Take away one thing if the teachers just do this, then They'll start to feel a little bit more successful in having conversations with their students.
Speaker 3:Yeah, look for the positive stories, look for the good, look for the joy, look for those things that will build that child up. So when the next time they do get into a situation where they're like I'm not really sure, I know this, they have the confidence that they can do a lot of things, whether it's in mathematics or in reading.
Speaker 1:Thank you for sharing that, lloyd, and for providing all these strategies and insights for our listeners. Unfortunately, that is all the time we have for today, but thank you so much for being here. Get inspired by following us on social media and please tag us in your posts on Twitter at curriculum Assouge, and on Instagram at my iReady. If you have feedback about the podcast, a topic of interest or want to be a guest email, extraordinary educators at cainccom, subscribe where you listen to podcasts and if you'd like to help more educators like you, join the conversation.
Speaker 2:Please leave a review, remember be you be true, be extraordinary. The extraordinary educator podcast is produced by curriculum associates. Editing by whiteboard geeks, social media by at city hannon. Guest booking by seri liberis. Production by hailey browning. This podcast is copyrighted materials and intellectual property of curriculum associates.