Lead Learners Update 2.11.13

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. 

Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

                                                                            (Beckef, 1984)

Upcoming Events
2.11 Curriculum Alignment (9-12 Literacy)
2.13 GT Council (AM)
2.18 PL Day; Board Meeting @ 6:30
2.19 Math Task Force (7:45 - 3:30) @ Point
2.25 Instructional Rounds (Crest and HS)

New Teacher Assessment and Feedback (Ying Ying Chen)
Click HERE for new teacher feedback for the January workshop
Click HERE for the new teacher self-assessment
There are specific comments for both ESC and building administrators. Please review them and continue to support your new teachers.  In general, they sincerely want to learn and improve.  As you can see from the survey, Think Aloud is a difficult strategy for most and will require more practice.  Please remind them about weekly implementation and continue to provide modeling and coaching to solidify their learning.

Text Complexity (Ying Ying Chen)
Implementing Literacy standards is every teacher’s responsibility.  To implement it well, teachers will need to understand the research about text complexity.  There are many ways to integrate this research into our current PL.  Here are a few ideas:

• Use this video (Simplifying Text Complexity) as the content for a mini PL
• Have teachers review Common Core Appendix A
• Examine the text set (Not limited to books; they can be on-line resources, videos, etc.) teachers used in the past month and rate their own “Text Complexity”
• Be intentional - Ask teachers to organize a text set for the next unit and share rationale for their decision (Read Appendix A or review video first)
• Have teachers tune a lesson or unit with a focus on “text complexity”

Digital Learning Train the Trainer Workshop (By Ying Ying Chen)
What they Learned/Shared:

1. Juxtaposed ISTE standards and TPP-Unit Design and used both success criteria to reflect on “promising practices”.  Learning outcome: Teachers recognize that good teaching shares  a common set of characteristics.
2. Showcased a school’s PD and brainstormed solutions to “unstuck” common challenges related to DL implementation
3. Participated in a “group coaching” session.  The purpose is to engage in on-demand coaching to ensure standards alignment, high level thinking and student centered instruction.
4. Planned a unit that can be used as an anchor for each school
5. Considered gamification for differentiated PD
6. Established “tight and loose” for keeping each other accountable for the rest of the school year (Tight: They must tune their unit before teaching, they must contact principals to see what they can offer in terms of coaching, modeling and planning for PD; Loose: when, how, etc.)
7. Examined SMART goal #3 data

What they can offer to your school:

• They learned at least two protocols (gallery reflection, group coaching) to help facilitate learning
• They have a set of probes that can be applied to facilitate staff reflection
• They know they don’t need to teach more “tools”, but they can help teachers reflect upon the impact of their implementation
• They recognize the benefit of reusing some of the tools such as Kid Blog to show how these tools can be used for publishing, communication and progress monitoring
• They learned how to coach (directly from Rubicon) to improve an instructional unit
• They can provide their unit as an anchor for modeling, group coaching, etc.

Digital Literacy Summer Professional Learning Opportunities (Craig Barnum)
It’s hard to believe that we should be talking about summer already, but it will be here much sooner than we all think.  With that in mind, I’m excited to announce that we have two days set aside in June for digital literacy professional learning.  On June 6th and 7th, there will be two trainers from Apple on site to offer half-day workshops on the iLife Suite (iPhoto, iMovie, iTunes, etc...) and Mac OS Basics.  Each session will be offered twice each day (once in the morning and once in the afternoon) with a limit of twenty teachers per session.  Angela will be sending out a flyer to all staff in the next few days with all the details on time, location, and sign-up procedure.   Because Apple caps each session at twenty, please encourage your staff to sign up early.  While these sessions would be a great experience for many of our existing staff, the timing may be particularly good for new hires, too.

Curriculum Matters (Bill Poock)
Math Textbook Pilot/Review Update:  Our 3rd and final round of reviewing/piloting math curricula will begin this Friday, February 15th.  Materials will be picked up and delivered to the next building.  Tim Potter has already been sent the schedule for pickup/delivery.  As a reminder, see below:
Finalized Schedule for 3 Vendors:
Round #3:  February 15 – March 15 (20 days – 19 instructional)

Delivery Schedule:
February 15th:  all materials picked up and delivered to next school location
March 15th:  all materials picked up and returned to the ESC Warehouse
Delivery Schedule:
February 15th:  all materials picked up and delivered to next school location
March 15th:  all materials picked up and returned to the ESC Warehouse

Building Schedule:
Crest = Math in Focus
Heights = enVisions
Ridge = Go Math!
View = Go Math!
Creek = Math in Focus

On March 27th, we will have vendors in to present their product.  As of right now, I have asked MTF members on the textbook selection team to reserve this entire day.  It is likely that we’ll use the day to listen to 3 vendor presentations before we look at survey data and evaluation criteria documents to make a recommendation to the Board.

Curriculum Work Follow-Up:
We have now worked with all four elementary curriculum teams and will work on Monday with 9-12 ELA on curriculum.  As you design curriculum work follow-up in your building, please remember the following key insights:

• anchoring the work in the Rubicon curriculum mapping tool helps teachers to see the utility of this mapping tool for making curricular decisions
• Rubicon can be used to determine the degree of alignment to the Iowa Core Curriculum through our unpacked standards
• providing a scope and sequence of our curriculum aligned to the Iowa Core Curriculum ensures a guaranteed and viable curriculum--but alignment is only part of the work--it is through the instruction and assessment that we truly discover the degree of alignment
• designing common assessments begins with a critical look at the power standards--what is the essential learning for our students?  
• teams need some flexibility in the process for how they ultimately align their units with the common core curriculum--but it is important to help them “see” what the outcome will be--an aligned curriculum with power standards, essential understandings/questions, conceptual lenses, concepts, and skills/learning targets

It is exciting to see this work happening across buildings and teachers genuinely feel that this work is meaningful to their instructional design of units!

Student Services (by Cheryl Kiburz)
2.11  LETRS-Training rescheduled from 1.30.2013, 8:30-4:00 PM, Sixth Street GWAEA office

In the October 2012 issue of Educational Leadership, published by ASCD, is a focus on Students Who Challenge Us.  On the final page there is a summary of things to remember from the contributing authors.  I have listed the 7 things to remember with some more detailed information from each article.  I highly recommend the article in bullet #6.

1. “A consistent schoolwide discipline system shows students that we care about their lives, not just their grades or test scores.” –Laurie Boyd

In no other area of education is the gulf between teachers and administrators wider than in the area of student discipline. When new teachers cite lack of administrative support as their reason for leaving the profession, what they usually mean is lack of administrative support in handling student misbehavior. When administrators complain to one another about teachers, they usually commiserate about those who struggle with classroom management and discipline.
The focus of our work is teaching and learning, and we invest a lot of time and attention in improving its design and delivery. Seldom, however, do teachers and administrators spend time together addressing an equally important task—developing a buildingwide discipline system. Ignoring the need for a comprehensive, consistent approach to student behavior is like sending teachers to deliver the academic program in utter darkness, wearing muzzles.

2. “We need to replace our current disability paradigm with one that honors and celebrates learning differences.” ---Thomas Armstrong

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/oct12/vol70/num02/First,-Discover-Their-Strengths.aspx

3. A teacher’s best gift to all students---especially those who have ADHD---is to make sure they feel safe.”---Edward Hallowell  These are some other interventions you can use in the classroom:

• Set up predictable schedules and rules. All children need structure, but for those who have ADHD, schedules and rules are as essential as maps and roads are for drivers. Without them, these kids can get completely lost.
• Have kids with ADHD sit near you. Being physically close to the teacher increases a student's level of attention. Being far away makes it easier to lose track of what's going on.
• Break down large tasks into small ones. A large task can intimidate anyone, but it completely bamboozles and overwhelms the student with ADHD, which can lead him or her to give up or suffer a meltdown.
• Introduce new material in terms of old. For example, "Today we start studying fractions. Fractions are just division written differently, and you've already mastered division."
• Balance structure with novelty, so that when the class gets overstimulated you introduce structure, and when the class gets bored you introduce novelty. Too much new material gets confusing, and too much drill gets boring.
• Make sure the class gets recess, and provide frequent brain breaks (brief periods of exercise in which students stand near their desks or stations). Physical exercise, even for one minute, presses the reset button on the brain and refreshes students mentally.

 

4. Remember that you have no idea which of your “misfit” kids will grow up to be the next superstar scientist, literary genius, or software designer.”—John Elder Robison

The first step toward connecting and succeeding with kids with autism is to accept that we are different, not "difficult." Frankly, if you cannot get past this hurdle, one or the other of us needs to be in a different school. It is a rare autistic child who sets his mind on being difficult. However, if you are neurotypical, every autistic person sees the world very differently from you. That neurological difference may make it harder to teach us, but it's the situation that's challenging, not the person.

5. Remember, power isn’t a finite pie:  If teachers share power with students, that doesn’t mean we’ll have any less.”—Larry Ferlazzo

6. Teachers can reduce challenging behavior by engaging in “random acts of kindness,” which show students that the teachers like them for who they are not just when they behave well.” ---Nancy Rappaport and Jessica Minahan

When, despite their best efforts, teachers feel defeated by a disruptive student, it seems they're fighting a losing battle. These students often have trouble regulating their emotions, become inflexible and have outbursts, and leave teachers feeling exhausted and incompetent.
Through our collaboration—one of us is a child psychiatrist who works with at-risk children; the other is a behavior analyst and special educator—we've developed an approach that helps teachers come up with practical interventions that can make a difference in students' day-to-day lives. It's built on the premise that teachers can only control a few variables—such as the classroom environment and their own behavior—in the lives of students with challenging behavior. Because of this, they must put preventative accommodations in place and recognize that how they respond to students' behavior has a huge impact.

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/oct12/vol70/num02/Cracking-the-Behavior-Code.aspx

7. No widespread system of bully prevention can rely on isolated bystanders to intervene.  School must focus on changing the social norms that fuel that cruelty.” ---Richard Weissbourd and Stephanie Jones

Acting together, and with adult support, students can reduce the incidence of cruelty in school—and make it a more caring place.