Friday, January 27, 2017

Professional Development: Looking Ahead

The Building Leadership Team met last week and mapped out the focus for our professional development for the rest of the year. Of course, our best case scenario....

Many focus areas were discussed and it was decided to stay the course with where we started and keep a tight, narrow focus. We will continue with our focus on writing and differentiation strategies.

Just a brief reminder...

The grand purpose for meeting to analyze writing/learn teaching strategies is for you and your colleagues to talk and think about student work and about your shared expectations for that work, doing this in ways that bring you together into a community of common practice. Shared assessment systems have amazing potential for distributing different teacher areas of expertise so that more people know what those individual teachers know. 

But... a shared rubric doesn't amount to a shared assessment system. The key is using that rubric (and other tools) to promote conversations about students' progress and about ways to support that progress. 

Here's the plan:

February 1st:  Writing sample analysis with level groups & sharing of strategies for sharing student progress

February 8:  Activate prior learning/ choose groups and begin application of a differentiation strategy

February 15: Application of differentiation strategy

February 17th : All day

February 22: Personal Plan time

March 1: Keith- Collaborative Problem Solving (Artist Edition afterwards)

March 8: Application of a differentiation strategy

March 15: Writing analysis with level groups

Spring Break

April 5: PARCC Training for Teachers

April 12: Personal planning (week of PARCC)

April 19: Personal planning (week of CMAS)

(April 24th, 25th are the designated days to administer the school-wide  Writing Assessment)

April 26: End of year student writing - School wide assessment (Looking at the results of the school-wide writing assessment in level teams)

May 3: Student-Led Conference time

May 10: Showcase Celebrations 3rd Grade

May 17: Report Card prep time

May 24: Showcase Celebrations 6th Grade

May 31: 

June 1st: Last day of school

Calendar:

Week of January 30th:
Lisa's Crew out on Winter Voyage
Monday - Debbie out
Tuesday -
MTSS 7:30 a.m.

Wednesday:
4th Grade out on field work/Deborah out with them

PD: 1:30 p.m.
* Writing sample analysis by level
* Strategies for sharing student progress

Thursday:
Deborah out at admin. meeting

Friday:

Week of February 6th:
4th Grade Crews out on Winter Voyage
Brittany's Crew out on Winter Voyage

Monday:
Parent Orientation 8:00 a.m.
(includes perspective Discovery parents)

Tuesday;
MTSS meeting 7:30 a.m.

Wednesday;
The Beat 9:00 a.m.
PD: 1:30
* Activate prior learning of differentiation strategies/choose groups and begin application of differentiation strategy

Thursday:
Deborah out admin. mtg.

Friday:
Debbie out

Have a wonderful weekend!

Deborah

January 13, 2017

We Think With Words

Vocabulary is the best single indicator of intellectual ability and an accurate predictor of success at school. -- W.B. Elley

Because each new word has to be studied and learned on its own, the larger your vocabulary becomes, the easier it will be to connect a new word with words you already know, and thus remember its meaning. So your learning speed, or pace, should increase as your vocabulary grows. -- Johnson O'Connor

We think with words, therefore to improve thinking, teach vocabulary. -- A. Draper and G. Moeller

Those quotes may be all you need to revisit your lesson plans/schedule and see if an intentional focus on vocabulary is present. You got this - but just have to get it back on the radar or celebrate that it is!

Some of you have let me know that you aren't really sure just how to deliver this instruction. So...did some research and low and behold, good ole Robert Marzano has something pretty specific for you to follow. If you've never heard of Robert Marzano he's an educational researcher and teacher. He stresses that in all content areas, direct vocabulary instruction is essential and suggests six steps. 

So here they are:

Step one: The teacher explains a new word, going beyond reciting its definition (tap into prior knowledge of students, use imagery).

Step two: Students restate or explain the new word in their own words (verbally and/or in writing).

Step three: Ask students to create a non-linguistic representation of the word (a picture, or symbolic representation).

Step four: Students engage in activities to deepen their knowledge of the new word (compare words, classify terms, write their own analogies and metaphors).

Step five: Students discuss the new word (pair-share, elbow partners).

Step six: Students periodically play games to review new vocabulary (Pyramid, Jeopardy, Telephone).

Marzano's six steps do something revolutionary to vocabulary learning: They make it fun. Students think about, talk about, apply, and play with new words. 

Rebecca Alber

Edutopia Consulting Online Editor

FOLLOW:

https://twitter.com/WordLib

RELATED TAGS:

Teacher Leadership

All Grades

You'll notice that in none of the steps are kids looking words up in the dictionary or writing the definition over and over. The words come from context. The key - active and engaged, multiple exposures and authentic opportunity to apply the vocabulary. Students can also have a voice in identifying the words you study. Maybe you can get Wendy to teach the kids the sign for those words!
If you want to dig deeper into how you would do that and would like some support in how to further your implementation - I'd love to help.

I think after you look the six steps your initial response might be, "Where am I going to find that kind of time?" Not sure... except to encourage you to integrate it into what you are already doing - but intentionally. I can see some of the steps included in Morning Meeting, a transition, and as part of the direct instruction you are already doing. We should be sharing with one another how we are solving that challenge.

For those of you who want to know even more, consider this:

When considering which words need the most instructional attention, let's turn to Isabel Beck's practical way of categorizing vocabulary words into three tiers:

Tier One: Basic words that rarely require instructional focus (door, house, book).

Tier Two: Words that appear with high frequency, across a variety of domains, and are crucial when using mature, academic language (coincidence, reluctant, analysis).

Tier Three: Frequency of these words is quite low and often limited to specific fields of study (isotope, Reconstruction, Buddhism).

Beck suggests that students will benefit the most academically by focusing instruction on the tier two words (since these appear with much higher frequency than tier three words, and are used across domains). So, this is when you take a look at the pre-reading vocabulary charts your kids created and choose "kind of" and "don't know at all" words that you deem to be tier two words. Go ahead and select some content-specific words (tier three) but only those directly related to the chapter, article, short story, or whatever you are about to read.

You now have a vocabulary list. It's time to teach.

Calendar

January 16 -20:
Monday:
No School

Tuesday:
MTSS meeting 7:30 a.m.

Wednesday:
PD: 1:30 Differentiation Strategy
BLT team meeting 3:00

Thursday:
Deborah out of the building admin. mtg.



January 23 - 27:

Tuesday:
MTSS meeting 7:30 a.m.

Wednesday:
The Beat
2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th grade Discovery Winter Voyage

Enjoy the three day weekend!

Deborah