As principal, I have the great fortune of meeting and talking to MANY parents about everything under the sun. This week I had a conversation with a parent who is new to Medlock (actually new to Georgia) and she shared how impressed she was with our teachers. She stated that her childrens' school experience here in these few short weeks has far surpassed that of their former schools. I proceeded to tell her that our staff is the secret to our success. Yes we have supportive parents and we have well behaved and loving kids, but it is you, the staff, that put your heart and soul into this school. You pour everything you've got into the kids and you do whatever it takes to support each other. It is your optimism and action that help us get through the tough times and we all know that times have been tough for a while. Thank you for realizing that you make a difference and that you will make a lasting impression on kids for years to come.
Staff Spotlight
This week I would like to shine the spotlight on Matt Rogers. I can tell you that I have often been guilty of taking his instructional space (the gym) for granted. Many times, the gym is our "go to" location for programs, pep rallies, picture day (although not this year) and anything else that requires a large space. He graciously adjusts and "makes it work". In addition, Matt is a supporter of our PTA and the various requests that they make of him. We just experienced a day of fun at Runapalooza and he is gearing up to get slimed next week at the reward pep rally. Last year Matt chaperoned the 5th graders in Tybee Island and he has offered to do so again. I appreciate Matt's willingness to be a team player and support the school in any area of need.
Please don't forget that you too can "spotlight" a colleague who has helped you or has made a difference at MBES. The forms are located on my office window ledge.
Do you know what critical thinking is? Do you know how to successfully incorporate it into your classroom? If you’re a student, do you know how to think critically about a particular topic, idea, or project? This handy visual is truly a must-have for both students and teachers (and probably some parents and administrators out there) looking to expand their understanding and learning. It’s a guide to critical thinking skills complete with four (count ‘em, 4!) steps accompanied by fill-in-the-blank questions designed to pique your interest and illustrate how each step works.
In other words, keep this visual chart from Enokson handy while tackling your next project (for a PBL classroom perhaps?) or assignment. In case you were curious, here are some of the key skills that a student and / or teacher must have in order to master critical thinking:
Step 1: Knowledge
Identification and recall of information is key here. Answer the basic questions (Who, What, Why, Where, etc.)
Step 2: Comprehension
Organize your thoughts, select the facts, choose the ideas. Be able to interpret and paraphrase what you’re reading and learning.
Step 3: Application
Be able to use facts, rules, and apply principles. You should be able to find out information, solve problems, and give an example. This shows a higher level of understanding.
Step 4: Analysis
This is where the true learning really shines. Separate the whole topic or story into components / parts and pick each of these apart. Examine and then infer. Keep going! Do this for everything you’re hoping to learn about. You may just surprise yourself!
Technology Tidbits
http://www.mathbuddyonline.com/common/mbqad.html- I have sent this link before. This site will send you a free math problem of the day. However if you click the "sample lessons" tab, it will give you sample games (I only tested the younger grades). You may even decide that this is a site to which your grade level would like to subscribe. Check it out
http://www.transum.org/Software/- Attention upper grade teachers!!! This site can provide LOTS of math challenge for students. The problems are free but the answers require a subscription....I guess that is the catch.
News & Notes
HOT OFF THE PRESS.....The work to install the new playground structures may begin as early as next week. The project manager will come out to discuss specifics tomorrow morning. I will then have more information regarding the length of time that students will not be able to play in the back.
We may have to devise a schedule so that ALL students play on the 4th/5th grade black top. I will keep you posted.
Tomorrow we will complete the sixth week of school. Some of you may be thinking, man the time has flown by; while others (5th grade teachers especially) may be thinking this has been the longest six weeks ever. Either way, I agree with you. We are now at the point where the newness has worn off, we know our kids and we know what they need. We are remediating, challenging and exposing students to new things daily. At today's principals' meeting, I learned of the district's technology device roll out plan for the next 3 years. I will share details with you on Tuesday, but I can tell you now that the roll out will happen in cohorts. The decisions made will be contingent on each school's readiness to receive and implement the technology. Essentially, our ability to receive classroom sets of devices will be determined by our current capacity and ability to utilize what we have. I can truly say that I am so proud of the work that you have done and continue to do in the area of technology. In three short years, we have grown by leaps and bounds and I truly believe that YOU are the most important tool that students will come in contact with here at MBES.
Staff Spotlight
This week I would like to shine the spotlight on Susan LeBaron. Susan has been determined to make this year's school start as smooth as possible. Not only did she have the normal challenges of the dismissal process, the after school program rosters and the management of the green cards, but she also had to master the new visitor sign in system in a matter of a few days. I can truly say that Susan has gone above and beyond in dealing with the glitches in the system and bypassing Fulton County to get answers directly from the vendor. Susan's attendance is impeccable and quite frankly, she keeps a cool head amidst the hustle and bustle of the daily front office commotion. I appreciate Susan's willingness to learn new things and her ability to make adjustments as needed. Susan, thank you for your committment to MBES.
4C's: Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, Critical Thinking Skills (Thanks Leigh for sharing this article)
Supervisor of Gifted and Elementary Math / Cheltenham School District
The word "rigor" is hard to avoid today, and it provokes strong reactions from educators. Policymakers tout its importance. Publishers promote it as a feature of their materials. But some teachers share the view of Joanne Yatvin, past president of the National Council for Teachers of English. To them, rigor simply means more work, harder books, and longer school days. "None of these things is what I want for students at any level," Yatvin says. Part of the problem is that we have adopted the jargon without a clear understanding of what we really mean.
Calculating Cognitive Depth
For classroom teachers, the more important question is one of practice: how do we create rich environments where all students learn at a high level? One useful tool, Norman Webb's Depth of Knowledge Levels, can help teachers meet that challenge. Depth of Knowledge (DoK) categorizes tasks according to the complexity of thinking required to successfully complete them.
Level 1: Recall and Reproduction
Tasks at this level require recall of facts or rote application of simple procedures. The task does not require any cognitive effort beyond remembering the right response or formula. Copying, computing, defining, and recognizing are typical Level 1 tasks.
Level 2: Skills and Concepts
At this level, a student must make some decisions about his or her approach. Tasks with more than one mental step such as comparing, organizing, summarizing, predicting, and estimating are usually Level 2.
Level 3: Strategic Thinking
At this level of complexity, students must use planning and evidence, and thinking is more abstract. A task with multiple valid responses where students must justify their choices would be Level 3. Examples include solving non-routine problems, designing an experiment, or analyzing characteristics of a genre.
Level 4: Extended Thinking
Level 4 tasks require the most complex cognitive effort. Students synthesize information from multiple sources, often over an extended period of time, or transfer knowledge from one domain to solve problems in another. Designing a survey and interpreting the results, analyzing multiple texts by to extract themes, or writing an original myth in an ancient style would all be examples of Level 4.
Recently, educators have begun applying Webb’s DoK to help them design better instruction. Try this exercise to better understand the cognitive depth of the tasks you are using in your classroom and improve the rigor of your instruction:
Keep a list or collection of every task you ask students to do in a day (or in one subject for a week), including classwork, homework, and projects.
Sort the tasks into categories according to the four DoK Levels. Some resources which may help:
Work with a team of colleagues to review the groupings. Many tasks are easily categorized, but some will require deeper discussion to clarify your understanding of the levels. Strive toward consensus. A few pointers:
The verb does not define the level. Instead, consider the cognitive effort that a student will use to complete the task. The verb "describe," for example, could be any level, depending on the kind of description.
It is common to find tasks that seem to fall in between levels. When in doubt, assign the higher level.
"Extended time" alone does not make a task Level 4. Lower-level tasks that are merely repeated over a period of time are still lower level.
Analyze your groupings. What patterns do you see? Is there a reasonable distribution of tasks across the four levels? Do you notice anything unexpected?
You may be asking at this point, "Well, what is a reasonable distribution? How often should I be doing tasks at each level? What's the right sequence?"
DOK Levels are not sequential. Students need not fully master content with Level 1 tasks before doing Level 2 tasks. In fact, giving students an intriguing Level 3 task can provide context and motivation for engaging in the more routine learning at Levels 1 and 2.
DOK levels are also not developmental. All students, including the youngest preschoolers, are capable of strategic and extended thinking tasks. What they look like will differ, and what is Level 3 to a kindergarten student may be a Level 1 task for a middle schooler. All students, however, should have opportunities to do complex reasoning.
To find the right balance, ask yourself these questions:
What kinds of thinking do I want students to do routinely?
If my own child were participating, what would I want him or her to be doing?
What's the most effective way to spend the limited classroom time I have?
Decide for yourself how often you should focus on tasks at each level so that students gain the most from the learning opportunities you design.
Regardless of how you define "rigor," the important thing is that students are thinking deeply on a daily basis. Webb's Depth of Knowledge gives you a framework and common language to make that happen in your classroom.
Technology Tidbits
https://create.kahoot.it- a free way to create fun quizzes for your students for a pretest or quick check. Students will need a device or computer to use. It is a powerful classroom engagement tool and definitely worth setting up a free account.
News & Notes
Dr. Avossa will be proposing the school calendar for the 2015-16 and 2016-17 school years to the Board soon. Some of the proposed changes include teacher work days AND professional development days disbursed throughout the school year instead of front loading them on "pre preplanning" days. I will let you know when the drafts are ready for public comment.
It is hard to believe that the tragedy of 9/11 happened thirteen years ago. For many of us, it is still very vivid in our minds. Like many of you, I can recall the exact moment that I heard the news. My assistant principal walked to every classroom and told the teachers that a terrible tragedy had occured in New York. He said that there wasn't much information to share but that we should pray for our country. My assistant principal was not usually a very serious guy so when I saw the look on his face, I knew something unspeakable had occured. Although I was worried, confused and unsure of what was going on, I wanted to make sure that my students couldn't sense that anything was wrong. As loving and nurturing educators, our first thoughts are always our students and how to shield them from the cruel realities of the world. Just think, the children that we are shielding now, will grow up and serve as first responders, pilots, educators, military personnel and any number of other important roles in this country. As this days draws to a close, I hope that we all remember that what we do today matters. The lives we touch today matter. We will never forget that fateful day and the lives that were lost. But the best way that we can honor their memory is to live each day making a difference in the lives of others and teaching our children the importance of service.
Staff Spotlight
This week three ladies, Liz Nguyen, Katie Skelly and Ashley Mason have been nominated for their efforts with Genius Hour in 1st grade by Leigh Martin.
They are facilitating the Genius Hour enrichment activities for 1st grade. They have read books, played kindness games and helped students brainstorm kind phrases. They are currently helping each class brainstorm a Random Act of Kindness project that students will do for someone else in our school community. Genius Hour is definitely an "outside the box" activity and they have been creative and excited to help. Leigh also wants to acknowledge all participating grade levels for diving into Genius Hour and taking it very seriously. It is truly exciting to see this become a success!
Creativity.
Critical Thinking. Communication. Collaboration. What do these mean in your
classroom? I put them in the shape of a puzzle because it's hard to complete
the 21st Century vision without one of these pieces.
For our school, the
4Cs are a part of our district vision. It's a part of us making our vision come
to life in classrooms. So our next step was asking ourselves how we not only
make sure we include the 4 Cs for 21st Century learning in our planning and
instruction, but ultimately how we are going teach our students to use them and
transfer these skills. Thus begins my series on the 4Cs and how you can bring
them alive in your classroom! I do not personally have the answers, but I hope
that I can summarize what I've learned in other places, from other people, and
from professional development.
This Week's Focus:
So I will start
with Collaboration, a piece I feel is critical for the start of the school year.
We often incorporate team building components at the start of the school, but
we don't intentionally teach students how to collaborate and work
together. We just have them do activities with the hope that it will
happen.
As our school dives into PBL and providing our students with
more opportunities for critical thinking, a huge piece of this is collaboration.
We have realized that our students are much better prepared for working with
their peers when they are taught specific pieces of collaboration and then given
opportunities to put them in action.
The #1 Resource I have come across
is by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frye (if you don't know Fisher and Frye, they are
the Gradual Release Gurus!). They write a tremendous article about mini lessons you can use to teach your students
how to collaborate and cooperate in group settings. They divide these lessons
into 3 different categories of group work: • Personal Responsibility •
Respectful Discourse • Collaborative Problem Solving
Do
you not love these First 20 Days? Seriously, Fisher and Frye nailed it again.
I strongly urge you to read the article (short and succinct, but rich with
content!). You will be so glad you did - especially before school starts!
This is another
graphic they use in the article to get students to see what their contribution
is during group work. Again, just easy-to-use resources.
I'd love
to hear what others do and use to teach collaboration within your
classroom!
http://www.dogonews.com/- Online current events articles for kids with comprehension questions after the articles. Science and Social Studies articles are on this site as well.
News & Notes
We have been given a concrete date! The projectors are scheduled to be installed in the classrooms here at Medlock during the last week of October.
I have to say that this had been a tough week. The challenges of finding the highest quality teaching candidates (fifteen days after the start of the school year) are far greater than I imagined. Although the pressure is there to open the additional classrooms and get the children settled, my ultimate goal is to hire teachers who are highly qualified and share the same values that make the Medlock staff so outstanding. The bulk of my job requires compromise on all sides. However, when it comes to selecting the people who will have the greatest impact on our students' future....there is no compromise. Period.
Staff Spotlight
This week Vaishali Gokhale has been nominated for the staff spotlight by Kendra Deans. Vaishali works with Kendra's students throughout the day and she does whatever is needed to assist them. This includes but is not limited to working with them on math, going to lunch with the class and assisting at specials. Kendra is very thankful for Vaishali's patience and the caring way in which she interacts with her class. Vaishali has been instrumental to several classrooms since the start of the school year. When she has a few minutes of "down time" she volunteers in the Media Center or any other area where she might be of service. Vaishali will be the paraporfessional in the new Kindergarten classroom when it opens. Vaishali thank you for going above and beyond to support students.
15 Examples of Student-Centered Teaching–And 15 That Are Not So Much
On Sunday, we’re going to release a basic framework to begin to make sense of what “student-centered learning” mean in a modern classroom. (We’d have released it today, but Fridays are slow days in terms of traffic.)
We didn’t get too carried away and progressive with it–our goal was to help clarify for practicing teachers in existing K-12 classrooms a useful definition for student-centered learning. So I piggy-backed on our staff’s work (we’ll come back and update this post with a link then) with examples–15 examples of teacher-centered learning, and 15 examples of student-centered learning.
The text is shown below, but it reads better in the graphic as you can read both side-by-side for comparison’s sake. As always, comments and reactions are encouraged in comments below.
Teacher-Centered (Not-Student Centered)
Being clear about how to do well in your class
Admonishing students to “think”
Helping students master content
Helping students continuously practice and revise how they perform on one assessment form
Creating curriculum and instruction around standards
Handing students a rubric or scoring guide
Letting students choose the project’s product
Choosing “power standards” in a staff meeting in the middle of a summer PD with the other 4 teachers from your department or grade level
Allowing students to choose from two novels that are unlike anything they’ve ever seen or experienced in their lives
Worksheets, essays
Giving struggling readers a few extra minutes to read a 17 page short story
Starting class with a standard and target
Giving an on-demand assignment even though you just finished a writing piece or unit
Think letter grades
Grading everything
Student-Centered (Not Teacher-Centered)
Being clear about how you will promote, measure, and celebrate understanding
Modeling for students how to “think”
Helping students understand what’s worth understanding
Diversifying what you accept as evidence of understanding
Creating curriculum and instruction around a need to know
Collaborating with students to create the rubric or scoring guide
Letting students choose the project’s purpose
Choosing “power standards” from your curriculum after meeting with both students, parents, and community members that voice their unique societal and cultural needs
Letting students choose their own media form that reflects the purpose of the reading
Choice boards
Placing struggling readers in a lit circle that gives them an authentic role that they can be successful in, allows them to hear oral fluency and reading speed modeled, and keeps them from feeling “broken”
Starting class with a story
Using the on-demand writing prompt as the summative assessment
Think feedback
Choosing what’s graded carefully, and considering other work as practice
Technology Tidbits
http://wonderopolis.org/- subscribing to this free site will give you access to Wonders of the Day® this may be a great morning arrival activity for students to spark creativity. Definitely worth checking out. It may even be an effective tool for writing response journals.
News & Notes
Congratulations to Traci Fleck who has received a $104 donation from Office Depot for her request for classroom supplies through www.adoptaclassroom.org Be sure to visit the website and register for free.
