Clif Notes 11/12/18
50 Years Of Equipping The State & Now Global Workforce!
DATES TO REMEMBER
This Week - National Apprenticeship Week
Monday - Veteran's Day/CLOSED
Tuesday - CTE PLCs;
7:35am 50th Anniversary Committee Mtg, C100
Wednesday - Academic PLCs; Extra Help
Thursday - Academic PLCs
Friday - School Spirit & ROAR Committee Meetings; Fall Sports Banquet
Upcoming:
11/19 - Mandatory Senior Class Meeting, 8:15am, Auditorium
11/21 - No School/Offices Open
11/22-23 Thanksgiving Holiday/CLOSED
11/26 - Board Meeting Hosted by Delcastle
National Apprenticeship Week 2018 begins Monday, November 12-18. Apprenticeship Week is designed to celebrate apprenticeships and the positive impact they have on individuals, businesses and the wider economy. On Thursday, November 15th both plumbing and welding students will celebrate Apprenticeship Week with M Davis & Sons.
National Association of School Psychologists
The National Association of School Psychologists identifies week as National School Psychologists Week. Ellen Flanagan does an outstanding job of meeting the needs of our students who face many social and emotional obstacles. In addition, she helps our staff navigate the identification process for special education under IDEA. Thanks for all that you do.
Flag Football
Delcastle's Flag Football Team has made it to the Playoffs. They will play McKean at Delcastle starting at 3:30 pm on Tuesday, November 13th. Please come out and help cheer them on. Let's go Cougars!!!
Jeans for Troops
Boys Soccer
Rocket Stove Winner
Chromebook Shortcuts
The tech coaches have put together a doc with some of the basic Chromebook shortcuts that will help students use their devices more efficiently.
Please direct students to this post in their Schoology Class Groups as well. ~ Saladyga
Delcastle Instructional Focus
Interesting Read - Taking Action on Adolescent Literacy by Judith L. Irvin, Julie Meltzer and Melinda S. Dukes
Having Students Interact with Text and with Each Other About Text
In classrooms that support motivation, students frequently work in small groups and pairs to analyze texts and to edit one another's writing assignments. Teachers structure learning experiences to help students develop deeper comprehension through discussion, to debate using text-based reasoning, and to understand various points of view. A collaborative learning experience within the context of a classroom environment that welcomes and supports diverse perspectives is the norm across the content areas. The multiple literacies that students bring to the classroom are viewed as a capacity and a resource. Teachers might encourage students to compare and contrast how a scene could be described using first language, home dialects or vernacular English, or IM script. Different ways of approaching and solving problems in math and science and writing are discussed and appreciated. When students share how situations similar to those being studied in social studies or read about in English would play out within their own cultural contexts, teachers value their contributions as additional insight into the topic at hand, not a distraction.
Kamal and his team members were able to discuss their project with one another from its inception through its presentation. They were able to discuss texts and to use their native languages when necessary to understand or explain to one another or to find out how to express something in English. Class activities encouraged discussion and debate and exploration of multiple, often conflicting, texts and points of view.
Focusing on Authentic Literacy Tasks
Authenticity is often the hidden key to motivating reluctant readers and writers to engage in academic literacy tasks. Yet in many middle and high school classrooms, authentic literacy tasks, if they occur at all, tend to be infrequent events. Moreover, many teachers consider simulated performance tasks to be authentic—a perspective students often do not share. Adolescents want their work to matter, and they want to conduct inquiry for reasons other than it being an assignment or an exercise. Authentic literacy tasks play into adolescents' needs to do things that are real and often prompt new effort for rehearsal, comprehension, discussion of content, planning, revision and editing tasks, summarizing, and other literacy skills because these activities are being carried out for purposes other than “just passing it in to the teacher.” This phenomenon was evident in the vignette; the fact that water quality was a real issue that mattered to Kamal and his teammates led to much more rigorous effort than standard textbook reading assignments had elicited.
Other authentic literacy tasks include adolescents reading with younger students or creating books on tape or authoring books for them, designing Web sites, writing newspaper articles, and conducting and reporting upon inquiries that reflect real societal concerns (such as neighborhood crime, pollution, teen issues, or school or city policies that affect them or their families). These strategies often motivate and engage students to persist with challenging or extended reading or writing tasks (Alvermann, 2001).
Encouraging Critical Literacy
Helping students to analyze bias, perspective, audience, and the underlying assumptions and purpose of a piece of writing is an authentic approach for studying texts because it empowers students to understand that texts are not infallible. As vehicles for communicating the point of view of the author, texts are infused with subjectivity and based on assumptions. Understanding the larger political, historical, and economic contexts within which texts are produced allows students to comprehend why certain perspectives are valued above others, what assumptions underlie the author's words, whose ideas gain currency, and why this might be the case. Students can apply these understandings to their reading of an article about a scientific discovery, primary sources, history textbooks, novels, newspaper stories, and many other types of text. For many students, this approach to studying text is motivating and meaningful and leads to greater engagement with text. For Kamal and his teammates, understanding the texts so they knew if the water system was at risk was an important reason to persevere through challenging material.
***More to read next week***