Use LiveSchool Data for a Staff Retro on the School Year

Reflect on Behavior Trends

Invite your team to review the top behaviors according to number of positive points, negative points (if applicable) and the ratio between the two. You can do this using the Behaviors Scoreboard in Insights. Questions to ask the team to reflect on:

• Which behaviors earned the most merits? What made those behaviors most frequently recorded and how can you expand your encouragement of other behaviors?
• Which behaviors earned the most demerits? Can you flip those negatives to positives for next year?
• If you had to pick just three behaviors to focus on next year, what would it be and why?

Bonus tip: Use the School Dashboard to see when point tracking activity was the highest throughout the year. Ask the team: what does the points graph suggest?

Review and Discuss System Fidelity

Your culture system works best when your staff is participating with fidelity. This is a great time to talk about how you did this year, and how you can improve next year.

First, access the School Dashboard to see a line graph of when tracking activity was the highest and lowest over the year. Reflection questions:

• Why do you think fidelity increased and decreased when it did?
• Are there periods where the team does better or worse at the positive-to-negative ratio? What drives that?

Second, use the School Dashboard to review top teachers awarding points. This is an opportunity to discuss classroom strategies as a group. You may want to follow up this discussion with one-on-ones with staff who need more targeted support (again, using the Teacher Dashboard as a tool). Questions for the group:

• Are there large discrepancies between the top points recorders and the rest of the team?  If so, why?
• Are there differences between the top positive point trackers, and negative point trackers? If so, is there a clear reason?
• Can the team build better expectations for when and why positive and negative points are given?

Discuss Rewards and Incentives

Don't miss the opportunity to talk about what motivates students. As Paul Kennedy, Director of Scholar Advancement and PBIS Coordinator at Global Academies in Philadelphia, PA said in a recent conversation with our team: "The key to LiveSchool is the rewards! You have to figure out what motivates your students and keep it fresh." If you're running a Rewards store, view your Rewards Scoreboard as a team for data. Questions to ask:

• Why were the top rewards motivating for students?
• What's the root cause for the low-performing rewards?
• Are there opportunities in the coming year to introduce new rewards, like no-cost privilege rewards?
• Is there an opportunity to ask our student body what might motivate them?

Bonus Tip: How To Run a Retrospective

There are lots of ways to format effective retrospective conversations — there are many models out there!

• The Stop Start Continue format asks your team to speak up on what they want to start doing, stop doing, or continue doing. This model is all about action, and how to very clearly define how you want to adjust the things the team does.
• The Four L's format is a bit more introspective. The team is asked to share what they liked, learned, lacked, and longed for in relation to the process. Use this to talk through how staff felt about your culture system, and explore how to tweak things next year.
• Use your own structure + a collaboration tool. Ultimately, the goal of a retrospective is simply  a candid conversation, and there are a million ways to do that. Dianna Armstrong — Interventionist at Lanier Middle School in Freeport, TX— regularly shares with us her team's retro Google Jamboards. She leads a retrospective every 9 weeks; it starts with a review of their LiveSchool data, and then uses the SWOT model to drive collaboration. The Jamboard makes it visible and easy to collaborate remotely or in person.

If you're winding down your school year, congrats to you and your team on finishing a challenging year! We hope your LiveSchool data is instrumental in reflecting on what worked, and making meaningful plans for improvement in the coming year.

Interested in learning about how to bring LiveSchool to your building in the coming year? We'd love to chat! Tell us more about your needs here.

Photo by Allison Shelley for EDUimages