Great Things Noticed:
Targeted Small Group Instruction - In several different classrooms a teacher was working with a small group of students because he/she identified a skill that needed to be reinforced with these students. It was wonderful to see there was great thought in creating the groups, and this allowed for the teacher to maximize his/her effectiveness with the lesson.
Baby Its Cold Outside - With the weather so cold the students are not able to go outside for recess as often as they were earlier in the year. A few teachers have let students know that if they would like to come into their classroom to work during lunch/recess their doors are open. When visiting these classrooms I was amazed at the turnout, there are kids everywhere. It is so nice to see the relationships our teachers are building with students so that on their own time they choose to come into a classroom and work.
Wii Sports - In a math class a teacher has figured out a way to hook up the Wii to his SMART Board and play games. A student would play one round of homerun derby and they other students would then use this information to determine the average, and convert numbers to fractions, decimals, percents, and create graphs. Even students who traditionally have not had much success with math were persevering through this fun lesson.
Non-Newtonian Fluid - a fluid whose flow properties differ in any way from those of Newtonian fluids. Most commonly, the viscosity (the measure of a fluid's ability to resist gradual deformation by shear or tensile stresses) of non-Newtonian fluids is dependent on shear rate or shear rate history. If you don’t understand what this means either, you are not alone, I had no idea. However when this science teacher gave the students an example of it and let them play it was much easier to understand. There has to be some math equation out there that says the greater the mess in your classroom the greater the student engagement.
Peer Tutors - In a few classes students who had demonstrated they were ‘experts’ with a particular skill were helping to teach others who had not mastered a skill. Life is good when the kids can become teachers.
Differentiated Instruction - In another classroom students were moving at their own pace to complete tasks. Some students who moved a little slower were working on a project that others had finished quite some time ago. Other students who moved more quickly grabbed the directions and kept going to the next project. Students had questions on how to do things as they moved from one activity to the next, but they rarely asked the teacher in the room. Instead they went to list of YouTube videos the teacher had given them to learn the next skill. Amazing differentiated instruction!
Upcoming Events:
- January 12th Chromebooks go home for 8th Grade
- January 13 8th Grade to Lenape Valley; 8:45 am – 11:00 am
- January 14th Chromebooks go home for 6th/7th GradeJanuary 19 In-Service Day
- January 19th Olweus Training - Biulding a positive school culture for students
- January 20th Chromebooks go home for 5th Grade
- January 22nd Department meetings for ELA, Math, Sci, SS (times to come shortly)
- January 23rd BIS Spot Light - 2:30 - 3:15
- January 29 Department meetings for Specials
- January 30th End of MP 2 (moved back 1 day for snow)
- February 5th SCIP
Nuts and Bolts:
At the start of your next unit please create them in a Gdoc and share it with us. You can use the template that Fran provided which is a blend of Madeline Hunter and Wiggins, or if you prefer one of the other UBD templates we had given you last year you can use that as well.
Thank you for locking your doors at the end of the day!
Soon we will be scheduling Mid-Year meetings with either Fran or myself where we will be discussing how things are going so far this year, progress on your SGO's and the results of your SGP from last year if you are in a tested area. We have not set dates for this yet, because we are still waiting on the SGP results to arrive.
Just a reminder in your interdisciplinary class, we would like your grade level to decide when you will be teaching these two lessons to teach students about digital citizenship. Please keep your ears open and if you hear students reporting misuse of social media or the chromebooks please let us know. on one day this week, and one day next week to teach these lessons to your students. Over the break we have been contacted by a few parents about how students are misusing social media. We believe these lessons will help to make the students more aware about how their actions affect others, and the consequences of their own actions.
Tech Tips:
TLDR (Too Long Didn't Read) Plugin is a free extension that creates a summary of any web article without leaving the original page. This has the potential to be a huge time-saver, especially if you are taking any graduate classes and are looking for sites to help you do research.
ThingLink: Create interactive images and videos for web, social, advertising, and educational channels. Be creative! Make your images come alive with video, text, images, shops, music and more! Every image contains a story and ThingLink helps you tell your stories.
- Example 1
Google Classroom 2.0: Many of you are using Google Classroom as way to provide feedback for students and are liking how it works. If you are ready to go to Classroom 2.0 check out these how-to videos that allow you to use a rubric to assess the students and the students actually get the rubric with how they did in each area.
Prerequisite - Using Google Classroom, Not afraid to try Doctopus
Worth a Read:
With all of the changes that have occurred in education over the last 10 years we have all experienced some level of frustration or at times even desperation. This article is an example of how one teacher has dealt with these changes and his outlook on educaion, it is worth a read.
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