Date: March 20, 2026
To: All Administrators
From: Dr. Chelsea Malouf, Literacy Director
Adrienne Kumik, Literacy Supervisor
Dr. Tiffany Hall, Executive Director
Teaching and Learning
Subject: Academic Discussion Data Collection Event 2026!
Summary:
The district’s Strategic Plan for Student Achievement has a goal to increase student academic conversation—the opportunity to talk about thinking or demonstrate learning—to 50% of time in every classroom. This looks different grade to grade and content to content: what is important is that students are personally engaged in actively processing their learning.
Collecting Data
Earlier this year, we collected perspective data about academic discourse from teachers and administrators. We had a great response rate—thank you! It was great to see that academic discourse is being used intentionally throughout the district and valued for the increase seen in student engagement and learning.
We now need to collect data on the observed percentages of academic conversation in the classroom so we can report to the Board. We will be using an observation protocol that will collect information without any teacher identifiers. Information will be reported by elementary, middle, and high school levels.
Friday, March 27, 10:30 – 11:30: Training on the observation tool and protocol. Instructional coaches and district staff will be participating. Any school administrators who would like to participate are invited to join us in the board rooms.
Monday – Wednesday, March 30 – April 1: We will be strategically visiting classrooms across the district for 20-minute sessions. We plan to capture data from different grades, content areas, and times of day. Again, we would love to have site administrators join us for any time you have available to support the process.
Rationale:
This will demonstrate instruction change as we move through the years of our strategic plan.
Expectations for Implementation:
- Communication
- Teaching & Learning will send information to teachers. Please help us spread the word – and the assurance that this is NON-EVALUATIVE and anonymous data collection.
- Collaboration:
- Dr. Chelsea Malouf
- Adrienne Kumik
- Tiffany Hall
- Evaluation
- Our objective is to capture a broad look at district wide data that we can replicate each year to track our progress on this instructional goal.
Keywords: Strategic Plan, academic discourse
