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BELLEFONTE -- At this week's Bellefonte Area School Board meeting, Jacqueline Wynkoop, secondary literacy coach for the district, presented the work that is being done in the district in regards to Text-Dependent Analysis.
First and foremost, Wynkoop went over what she called "TDA 101" and made sure that everyone in the audience understood the logistics of what they're trying to accomplish.
TDA or Text-Dependent Analysis are tasks found on grades 4-8's ELA PSSAs that require students to read a text -- either a literary or informational text -- and then use effective communication skills to write an essay in response to a complex prompt.
These prompts go beyond general reading comprehension, making the student critically examine the passage they're given and analyze a deeper meaning as well as provide evidence from the text to support their response.
Students must respond to two different TDA prompts on their PSSA; though only one is scored and the other is used as a field test.
The Bellefonte Area School District's first goal in regards to TDA is to increase student performance on these constructed response scores in each assessed subject area by 10 percent or more by the end of the 2023 school year.
"It's important to us. We wanted to make a goal that we felt like we could make with a lot of hard work," said Wynkoop.
At this time, there have been three action steps implemented to achieve this goal with a fourth step in progress.
The first action was taken in fall of 2022 where they facilitated full-day grade level meetings with ELA teachers in grades 4-8 to accomplish the following:
-- Reflect on current obstacles and set areas of focus moving forward.
-- Assess how current instruction and assessments aligned with ELA Eligible Content and PSSA Released Items for their grade level.
-- Learn key components of close reading and engage in a close reading lesson.
-- Review ELA data for their grade level.
-- Develop a year-long roadmap for incorporating critical TDA skills.
"We had (instructors) give feedback as to some of the gaps there may be," said Wynkoop. "We talked about close reading. In order for the students to answer their prompts they have to be able to close read."
The next step in the process took place during late fall and early winter where grade level teams implemented the steps they'd outlined in their roadmaps. This was then followed by grade level teams coming together in late winter for a full day of analyzing student responses to the common prompts and determining what comes next.
"We did some examples together, looked at sample responses from the state and shared student responses to read together," said Wynkoop.
The teams are now implementing their second TDA prompts at the building level with a small team of teachers and specialists working together to score. Teachers will determine final steps for instruction before the PSSAs, focussing on those students not demonstrating growth.
With all of the data collected, the next steps involve further implementation of these learning items.
"At the very end, (we asked) what are our instructional next steps? (The teachers) walked away with that in their hands so that they can immediately say 'Here's where I need to go next instructionally,'" said Wynkoop.
Teachers will expand common steps and resources on each grade level's TDA roadmaps, develop common closer reading lessons to be implemented and create additional common assessments aligned to the PSSA assessment anchors and released items.
Teachers will also work on ways to build student success and be provided continual training for all content areas K-12 relating to reading and writing across the curriculum.
"We're going to continue that work. Teachers are really finding value in (this) type of instruction. We're going to add to that bank of lessons and resources," said Wynkoop. "We're always providing training to teachers of all content areas -- specifically our social studies and science teachers, our non-ELA teachers. What can they do to help us with this? It doesn't just fall on ELA teachers, they're only one piece. It's collectively everyone's responsibility."