Cycle of Inquiry Prompts

Developed in collaboration with Bay Area Reform School Collaborative(BASRC)

1. Prompts when identifying a problem statement that includes an area of academic focus and a target group of students.
• From your data analysis, what are your possible problem areas?
• On the problem statement pages, state a brief overview around a problem (academic skill, teacher practice, culture, etc.) you wish to address in your school.
• You may want to list several focus areas - just list do so by filling out one problem per page.
2. Prompts when posing your inquiry questions.
• Is the curriculum aligned to grade level standards?
• How much time was spent teaching the components of the standard?
• Is the standard being taught considered high-leverage?
• What skills are assumed to be mastered prior to instruction?
• Is there need for professional development to deepen teacher content knowledge?
• Were students assessed and re-taught if necessary?
• Were the students given multiple opportunities to demonstrate knowledge of the standard?
• Were a variety of teaching strategies used?
• Are there interventions in place to assist students who need additional instruction?
• Did we communicate goals and expectations to students and parents?
3. Prompts when setting goals and define measures for school, grade levels and/or departments.
• What review and reflection of instructional/classroom practice has occurred? What data collection tools were used in the process? How will the goal be measured?
• Describe what students will be able to do as a result in changes in sutructional/classroom practice.
• What growth (as measured by assessments) will you see in the targeted students?
4. Prompts when building a concrete workplan that responds to your problem statement and will help each school meet their goals for both student achievement and teacher practices.
• What are the high leverage actions that need to take place? A high-leverage action serves the largest segment of target students, addresses skill gaps, has a direct impact on teaching and learning and can be implemented with the resources available.
• Does data collection change to measure the high leverage actions?
• What professional development activities need to occur?
• How will monitoring of high-leverage actions be incorporated into the existing routines of the site?
5. Prompts when implementing the workplan.
• Who is responsible for monitoring the implementation of the high-leverage activities across the entire site?
6. Prompts when analyzing the data to answer the questions about student achievement and teacher practice.
• What key trends in student achievement did you discover?
• Are there discrepancies in how various student groups performed in key subject areas comapred to the standards?
• What further investigation do we need to do based on the trend analysis?
• How much improvement is student achievement resulted?
• What strategies worked? How do we know?

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Last modified: May 13, 2004

Disclaimer: This website is the sole responsibility of Mike McMahon. It does not represent any official opinions, statement of facts or positions of the Alameda Unified School District. Its sole purpose is to disseminate information to interested individuals in the Alameda community.