We hope you enjoyed your well-deserved break and are re-energized as we get back into the swing of things. I know the recharge was great for my family to relax and reconnect. I even managed to stay away from Twitter and email for a few days...even if it was like going through withdrawal at times.... :)
Great Things Noticed:
Great Things Noticed:
- The TNT Game was a success! Thank you to Patty for coaching the boys team and running the sound for the National Anthem, Deb for organizing the PEER Leaders and the fundraising, Kathy for working with the cheerleaders all year, Jimmy and Pete for organizing the teachers to play in the game, and to all the teachers who played or attended the game. Thank you all for making it a special day for everyone at BIS.
- Joe Capriotti was working with a student and her parents because they were frustrated there wasn't a program that met the specific needs of their daughter. He developed a creative system that allows for the teacher, the parent, the student, and the tutor to all work together. If you have questions please see Joe about it. Sometimes we think color coding is for the elementary school, but this was a really cool idea! Check it out:
- You need three pens: a red, a yellow, and a green. As she does her math HW, she can mark problems with one of the three pens to indicate if it was easy, a struggle, or she was unable to solve it. She can also rate each homework on a google doc with 1-5 stars based on difficulty. When she meets with her tutor, she has a neatly organized record of what she needs more help on. The visual data she generates by doing this will help her see the scope of what she knows and what she needs to work on. It will ease the abstract fear of "MATH" and replace it with "I need some support on this particular concept."
- Deb Hooker developed a game system to see if students understood concepts before she began a chapter on multiplying fractions. She had stations where students played spoons, bingo, and a math racing game with cards. As the students work she checks in to see who has the skills at each station mastered and who needs help. All students are working to remove the cobwebs because they have a felt need to win the game, and no one said, "We never learned this last year." Way to go Deb!
- The 5th grade team has created a love of learning. If you are free during periods 9-10 stop by their wing and see how many students voluntarily come in to their 'Study Hall.' They have a rotation system set up where different teachers supervise the students who are doing their work. I asked the students who go down if they give away candy or anything they told me: No, I just like to have a place to do my work with my friends. Really cool stuff!
Nuts and Bolts:
Please welcome Mrs. Michele Melendez! She is taking over for Celeste Mayhood. Please stop by her room if you have the time to introduce yourself. I know we have great teachers at Byram who always help to ease the transition of someone new.
Monday, we would love it if you could take one picture of your classroom. It could be of the students in action, it could be before they come in and the class is set up ready to go, it could be after they leave and the room is a mess (as we all know learning is messy!) Please send your picture to me so that we can share it on Twitter, and contribute to this conversation. We are hoping to gather images and make it part of an advisory conversation in the near future. I feel as though our students will be amazed by the pictures they see from around the world, schools that have more than we do, as well as school that have much, much less.
Say goodbye to Teachscape!
Our SCIP team went to a presentation conducted by the good people from Genesis, and we will be moving to their web-based teacher assessment model. This software seems much more user friendly, it is faster, with less pages to navigate between, and when something needs to be fixed we do not have to wait several weeks for the company to fix it, we can do it here. This does not mean we are leaving the Danielson Framework, just the Teachscape portion. We are at work trying to have the Genesis team provide us with training on how to use their program in June so we can hit the ground running in September of 2016.
IDE - Our IDE program will be continuing next year and we have 8 spots that will open for teachers. This program centers around shifting the balance of responsibility from the teacher to the student within the classroom. Every month Rowena, a consultant from IDE comes in to work directly with the teachers and provides feedback and suggestions for teachers to improve their craft. I love this program because it is not a quick fix, or a silver bullet, it is a process. There is a week long training at the end of June you would have to attend that you would not be paid for. The district will pay for the training. If you are interested in learning how to move your class in this direction next year please give your name to JoAnn in the office and she will add your name to the list.
The March Parent Calendar will be sent out at the end of the week to notify parents about upcoming events. Please be sure to add to the March calendar anything that may take place before or after school, as well as any special grade level activities you have taking place. We will be locking the calendar on Wednesday of this week.
The Rammy is our competition for what is the Best Book Award for BIS. We have 32 books nominated and the goal is to have a 30 second commercial from the students on why their book should win the award (Thank you Jimmy). Then during March Madness we will air the videos on the morning announcements and have students vote for the book they think should win. Teachers we need your help to fill in the spots to make sure we have every book represented. If you know of a student who has read a book that is not filled in here, please see if they would be interested. Thank you in advance for understanding if one of your students is called out during period 13-14 to film with Mr. Clayton.
Teachers visit Teachers:
One of the best part about the job Tim and I have is we are able to go from class to class and see AMAZING lessons on a daily basis. We have so much talent in this school but none of the teachers are able to see anyone else and learn from what they do. After discussing this with our SCIP team we decided we will be dedicating specific days for teachers to invite other teachers into their class or perhaps go visit another class. Start thinking about which teachers you would like to connect with.
Teachers visit Teachers:
One of the best part about the job Tim and I have is we are able to go from class to class and see AMAZING lessons on a daily basis. We have so much talent in this school but none of the teachers are able to see anyone else and learn from what they do. After discussing this with our SCIP team we decided we will be dedicating specific days for teachers to invite other teachers into their class or perhaps go visit another class. Start thinking about which teachers you would like to connect with.
Upcoming Events:
BOE Meeting February 24th
STAR Reading Assessment given by ELA teachers March 7th - 11th
Tech Tips:
One Tab - Technology is great, but if you are like me by the time 10:00 AM rolls around I have a million tabs open in chrome. Having too many tabs open at the same time slows your computer down. By reducing it too one tab, you can restore the computer's speed. How many of our students could use this as well? Below is the description from their site, I highly recommend it!
- Whenever you find yourself with too many tabs, click the OneTab icon to convert all of your tabs into a list. When you need to access the tabs again, you can either restore them individually or all at once. When your tabs are in the OneTab list, you will save up to 95% of memory because you will have reduced the number of tabs open in Google Chrome.
No comments:
Post a Comment