PALS and PD

Last winter, Heather Feuerhelm, our former Grant Wood Area Education Agency (AEA) literacy consultant, introduced our fifth grade teachers and students to a literacy strategy named PALS. As word spread regarding our fifth grade team's implementation of PALS, our fourth grade teachers became interested to learn how it works/what it looks like so they, too, could implement PALS into their classrooms.

PALS is an acronym for Peer Assisted Learning Strategies, which pairs two students with the same text. A round of PALS gives each student an opportunity to read to their partner for five minutes. After each student has had their turn to read, both students alternate retelling facts pertaining to what was just read for two minutes. Each student then has five minutes to continue to read, and retell/summarize what they are reading; students finish with reading and making predictions for another five minutes apiece. PALS provides clear structure and purpose for our students and coincides nicely with the 'Read to Someone' rotation of the Daily 5.

Last year, our Iowa Assessment scores, which tests students in grades three through five, for students proficient in the area of Reading increased to 79%. This is an increase from our scores of 67% of students proficient in 2012. PALS is one inference that we have made in regards to these improved test scores.

Another indicator is our DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) benchmark testing, which all students take in the fall, winter, and spring. One component of DIBELS assesses how well students are able to retell what they read, a major emphasis of PALS. Last year during fall testing, 17% of our fourth graders had meet their spring expectancy for proficiency in retell. By the spring, we had 74% of students proficient in retell; a 57% increase! Also impressive is the improvement that our fifth grade scores showed, last year. Only 1% of our fifth grade was proficient, based off of the spring expectancy in retell, last fall. By the spring, we had 65% of students proficient in retell; a 64% increase! This year, the fifth grade group that received the PALS instruction last year as fourth graders is beginning the year with 61% of students already having met their spring expectancy for proficiency in retell from their DIBELS tests.

Earlier this month, Misty Forbes, our returning fifth grade teacher, led our teaching staff in some professional development regarding PALS. Misty talked about what PALS is, and gave our teachers an opportunity to go through a round of PALS as students. As a result of this new learning for staff, third grade is now doing PALS and our younger grades have some ideas for how they could alter PALS to make it work for their students. We are also starting to work with Rich McGrath, our new Grant Wood AEA literacy consultant, to see how we can keep the momentum of PALS going and build upon it.

We have monthly learning sessions like this scheduled for throughout the school year. The framework for this idea was adopted from a Bettendorf High School PowerPoint that I saw on Twitter via Bettendorf's High School Principal. Thanks @casas_jimmy. Anyways, aside from Misty's PALS session, we've also already had a session regarding social media as a communication and a learning tool.  Some of the other topics that are initially planned are: Sharon Walpole literacy strategies, the implementation of data binders for our students, and using iPads in the classroom.

The fact that we have data to celebrate that correlates with our implementation of PALS is exciting! However, equally exciting are all of the teacher leaders within our building that are willing to lead professional development for our teachers.