See the list of resources about Looking at Student Work below

Teachers look at student work every day. But "Looking at Student Work" (sometimes shortened to the acronym 'LASW') refers to a process that helps educators improve teaching and learning by reflecting deeply on teacher lessons and student work products. No one has captured the essence of the LASW process better than Kathleen Cushman, a writer/editor for the Coalition of Essential Schools. Here's how she introduced the concept in a 1996 issue of the Coalition's "Horace" newsletter:

The New York Times Science pages recently told the story of the heart surgeons in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont-- there are only 23 in all -- who agreed in 1993 to observe each other regularly in the operating room and share their know-how, insights, and approaches.

In the two years after their nine-month-long project, the death rate among their patients fell by an astonishing 25 percent. Merely by emphasizing teamwork and communication instead of functioning like solitary craftsmen, the study showed, all the doctors brought about major changes in their individual and institutional practices.

For teachers who, like heart surgeons, have traditionally worked as isolated professionals, the experiment holds a powerful lesson. If their goal is to lower the "death rate" of young minds and see them thrive, many educators now emphatically believe, they can do it better together than by working alone.

Like doctors making hospital rounds, architects gathered for a charrette, or lawyers examining clues to build a case, teachers in Essential schools have begun purposefully probing the rich evidence that lies immediately at hand in every school, searching for what it can yield about how students best learn.

They bring to the table their students' writing, math problem-solving, science projects, artwork, and whatever other evidence they can gather -- in written notes or audio or video form-- of what kids are producing every day.

Instead of disappearing into the bookbag or the wastebasket, these artifacts become a valuable mirror of how the school's practice does or does not reflect its intentions. Unlike a standardized test, their evidence speaks directly and revealingly of what teachers and students actually do and learn. Like a compass reading, it can then translate into informed action: changed perceptions of students; revised curricula and teaching strategies; new goals and a sense of direction for a faculty.

Rather than first focusing on the work's quality, these processes often ask teachers to suspend judgment and describe its qualities-bringing multiple perspectives to bear on what makes students tick and how a school can better reach them.

Since this article appeared, many more schools have begun to explore the potential of the LASW process. Some do it well; others may only be going through the motions. Certainly, there is no single "approved" approach that represents good "LASW practice." We have gathered together a variety of resources that can help teachers, principals and schools determine both the value of this professional collaboration in their own learning communities, and the best way to approach this powerful but challenging process in their own schools.

The resources below include a link to a story written in 1997 by MiddleWeb editor John Norton, about a team of middle grades history teachers in Long Beach, CA and the significant time and energy they invested in reflecting deeply on their students' work. These teachers, teamed with a college mentor, became "critical friends" who trusted each other enough to explore the effectiveness of their own teaching. Two quotes from college mentor Linda Whitney are worth repeating here.
"At first, and this is predictable I think, the (teachers) conversations were fairly safe. 'What was your objective? What did you want your students to know?' It was nice and comfortable conversation. Then we started asking more pointed questions, like whether there was rigor in the lesson -- whether kids were likely to meet standards. The questions became more profound as we went along."

"This work shows that good teaching is a developmental process, and in fact, it's never going to end. It's all right to say you don't know. These aren't mistakes we're looking at. They're examples of a teacher's work that's going through the process of getting better and better."

What follows are some of the best LASW resources we know about on the Web. We invite anyone who visits this page and has other suggestions to contact us. We want to promote this powerful professional development process in every way we can!

Core Resources
for "Looking at Student Work"


Looking at Student Work: The Website

This comprehensive site developed by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform explains how schools are analyzing student work to strengthen curriculum and instruction and identify professional development needs. At the site, you'll find sections about protocols (guidelines for conversations); resources (books, articles and videos); and research. Also see this page of links to sites that include examples of examined student work.

Using Student Work to Improve Teaching

"What Story Does the Work Tell?" offers tools to help teachers look critically at student work, including a set of guidelines developed by teachers. Middle grades math teachers may have a particular interest in "Developing Geometry Skills through Manipulatives," which includes both a student work sample and a commentary (with rubric) by a middle grades math teacher.


Looking Collaboratively at Student Work: An Essential Toolkit

A very helpful issue of "Horace" -- the newsletter of the Coalition of Essential Schools. Describes several strategies for examining student work, including the Coalition's tuning protocol. "Looking closely together at student work can unveil a treasure trove of insights to guide school communities as they reflect on their purpose, assess their progress, and plan strategies for reaching all children better. It's scary work, though, and respectful protocols can help."

School Leaders Look at Student Work

How can administrators invite teachers to look deeply at student work when they themselves do not know what to look for? For all the effort surrounding education reform and state standards, teachers and administrators seldom collectively answer the essential question of whether their students' work provides evidence that students know and can do what we say they should know and be able to do. In this article in the March 1999 Educational Leadership, two Massachusetts administrators describe how they began to look at student work themselves and what happened as a result.

The Collaborative Assessment Conference

The Collaborative Assessment Conference, developed by Harvard's Project Zero, can be used for a variety of purposes: to hone teachers' ability to look closely at and to interpret students' work; to explore the strengths and needs of a particular child; to reflect on the work collected in student portfolios; to foster conversations among faculty about the work students are doing and how to support that work. This page at Annenberg's Looking at Student Work website not only describes the conference process -- it includes a "Virtual Protocol" session where you can follow an actual LASW experience featuring a elementary school writing sample. The participants are mostly members of the National School Reform Faculty. This is the best demonstration of the LASW process we've seen on the Web. And we get around!

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Other Useful Information about
Examining Student Work Together


Looking at Teacher Work: Standards in Practice -- "Students can do no better than the assignments they are given." This is the premise of this video from Collaborative Communications Group and the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation. "Looking at Teacher Work: Standards in Practice" demonstrates the six steps of SIP -- a powerful, job-embedded professional development model developed by The Education Trust. In the 31-minute, how-to video, middle grades teachers work together to look critically at assignments and student work against standards. It's easy to use and available for $39.95 and an $8 shipping fee.

The "Standards in Practice" Model -- Standards in Practice is a model developed by The Education Trust for the systematic alignment of work assigned to students and standards. SIP works by engaging teachers in teams to examine their assignments and the resulting student work regularly. SIP is an ongoing process, because it takes teachers more and more deeply into examining the value of what they are teaching. It leads to many different kinds of professional development. Find out more at the EdTrust/SIP website and watch for an upcoming video that shows the SIP process in action. Also see this standards workshop at wNetSchool developed by EdTrust associate Ruth Mitchell and this article describing the process in detail.

"Hoover Middle School Teachers Examine Student Work" -- Describes the work of the history team at Hoover Middle School in Long Beach, Calif., which meets weekly to scrutinize student work and their own lessons. Listen in on an actual "critical friends" session, examine the student work yourself, and review the Hoover teachers' tips for other teachers who want to start their own collaborative groups.

"Teachers Learn from Looking Together at Student Work" -- A story at the Education World website examines two collaborative approaches that teachers are using to look at student work. Includes tips for looking at student work.

"Looking at Student Work: A Window into the Classroom" -- This practical book from Teachers College Press and the Annenberg Institute for School Reform (1999) explores a variety of ways in which looking at student work can help improve teaching and learning. You can also purchase the book/video package at the Annenberg website. The package contains a 28-minute videotape, a four-page facilitator's guide for using the tape with an audience, and the companion volume.

"Learning to teach better by examining student work" -- This article in Catalyst: Voices of Chicago School Reform (December 1999) includes teacher stories, research findings, and examples of student work (high-scoring, typical and low-scoring student work from grade 6 writing) accompanied by the assignments and teacher analysis. Also see: "San Francisco Invests in Teaching" (Catalyst, February 1998), a story that describes the LASW process at James Lick Middle School, where teachers reflect on their work with the help of "teachers on special assignment."

A Discussion about Teacher Collaboration and Looking at Student Work -- Teachers, principals and other "watchers" on the MiddleWeb middle grades listserv shared some questions and ideas about teacher collaboration and the LASW process during this archived conversation.

Examining Student Work Together -- The National Staff Development Council's "Tools for Schools" (February 2001) offered an overview of the "Looking at Student Work" process, with helpful worksheets and information about additional resources. As always, it's better to have a paper copy of this "hands-on" newsletter to take advantage of the worksheets. Also see the resources included with the article. And all of NSDC's LASW articles.

National Staff Development Council articles -- Here's a collection of articles about examining student work that have appeared in various NSDC publications, with links to on-line versions.

"The Cart Before the Horse Before the Cart" -- Subtitled "How Deeper Understandings of Standards, Instruction, and Assessment Can Emerge from Examining Student Work ," this article at the Annenberg Institute site documents discussions from two meetings where teachers, parents, and other stakeholders collaboratively examined a piece of student art and writing. "This set of examples demonstrates how deeper understandings of standards, instruction, and assessment can emerge from an ongoing cycle of inquiry focused on samples of student work."

"Teachers in the driver's seat" -- This article by Anne Lewis in the Harvard Education Letter (March/April 1998) recounts the progress of teachers in the Monaca school district near Pittsburgh who spend half a day every month looking at student work together -- with help from staff development experts from the Institute for Learning at the University of Pittsburgh's Learning Research and Development Center. This issue of HEL also includes an LASW protocol developed at Harvard Project Zero. The protocol is based on the notion that students are often working on problems or exploring interests beyond the parameters of a given assignment.

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