December 14, 2018

Focus on Good, no GREAT, First Instruction!

We continue to focus on GOOD, if not GREAT, first instruction.  Asking a large number of questions and checking the responses of all students is something all teachers should be doing daily.  When we stop talking "AT" students, we get them to reflect on their own learning and process the information at their level.   From this, and having ALL students participate in academic conversations determines whether or not the class is ready to move on, needs to work in small group, or you must reteach the concept to the entire class.

How can this be done, you ask?  In addition to the academic conversation cards that we have and can continue to laminate to tape on desks or student binders, here are some other suggestions to use:

• Structured academic conversation: Put sentence stems on board for each partner
• Summarizing and sharing out: whole class, neighbors, or just to teacher
• Use Google Survey as a quiz
• Use those whiteboards!!  Have them complete a quick write question, formative assessment, or an exit ticket! SO EASY!
• Use Padlet.com or post it notes to review quickly.  Again, SO EASY!

While this is happening in the majority of classes at GVMS, it IS still happening.  It the classrooms where we see the discipline issues, the failing grades, and  boredom.  Check out the Student Advisory Council Board Meeting.  Out of the mouths of babes and, yes, one of those students is a Viking.

Any of you that have had the chance to read John Hattie and his High Impact Strategies for Teachers, you know that he focuses on student achievement and the high impact teachers have on students' learning.  We recently went to a training and reviewed the 6 areas that contribute to learning (student, home, school, curriculum, teacher, and learning approaches) as well as his updated list of 150 effects of visible learning.  Take a look HERE at the 252 influences of related to student achievement.  Any guess on what the most influential one is?  Yep.  Teacher efficacy.  Read it.  It's worth your time.

I know I sent the link to the CA Dashboard to have you all review, on your own time, where GVMS stands in regards to ELA scores, Math scores, Suspensions, and Attendance.  We reviewed this, again, in great detail on Monday.  Take a minute to really look at our data.  What is it telling us?  What area should we be focusing in on?  Do we need to refocus our overall goals?  

We will be reviewing this data, more in depth, at our faculty meeting on January 8, when we return from break.  This will be guiding our focus for the remaining part of the school year!

SUPER HERO SHOUT OUTS!

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• SUPER awesome shout out to Brenda for answering all of my "new staff member" questions without rolling her eyes (at least not in front of me!) ~Karron
• SUPER awesome shout out to Nate for coming to the rescue in P1! ~KC &CL
• SUPER awesome shout out to English Department for an awesome Collab Day!  Best Department Ever! ~Heather T. =)
• SUPER awesome shout out to Tamia for working so hard with our 6th graders! ~Cristina
• SUPER awesome shout out to Marlys for all of your help everyday in 1st period! ~Cristina
• SUPER awesome shout out to Cristina for putting together the slides for Creating a Culture of Kindness for the 6th grade team! ~Ryan
• SUPER awesome shout out to Ms. Kristy and Jason for coming to my rescue more often than not in the parking lot! ~KC
• SUPER awesome shout out to PE DEPT for always being willing to help supervise before and after school! ~KC&CL
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