Falcon Flyer
Week of November 6, 2017
Liberty Middle & Veterans Day
I am most excited about the program that we have planned for our school this Friday at 1:30. Please invite any of your friends and family that have served our country to attend. We will have a reception for the Veterans beginning at 1:00. Also, please encourage your students to invite their friends and family as well. It is our hope that we will have a large turn out so that we can not only thank our Veterans, but show our students the importance of the service that they have provided to our country.
Student Supervision
Thank you for your help in ensuring that our students are safe at all times.
Working Wednesdays
It is important to remember that this is about holding our students accountable. Allowing a student to take a ZERO or any other low grade on an assignment is allowing the student to quit on himself/herself. It's allowing them to take the easy way out. It is definitely easier on us to allow that. It takes a lot of time and effort for each of you to keep up with these students and their assignments. However, it is a necessary part of the job. Our students don't think about the long term effects of quitting on themselves now, but we understand the lasting impact. It might take them awhile, but they will learn that we are not going to allow them to take the zero. Thank you for working with them, frustrating them, and often inconveniencing them to help prove this point. I am proud to work with each of you.
PLEASE DO THE FOLLOWING:
1. Before you release students to their related arts classes (both time periods) pull up the Working Wednesday document and remind the students that are on the list that they are report to the specific teacher's room.
2. If a student DOES NOT report to your room for Working Wednesday, please call the office so that we can check that they have reported to their related arts class instead. (This will help us ensure that students are not skipping classes.) If we locate them in the class, we will send them to your room to work.
3. If a student does not report to Working Wednesday, he/she will be required to spend two mandatory lunch detentions with you.
Notes from Jeremy - Data & Incentives
It is hard to believe we are through the first nine weeks and Thanksgiving is quickly approaching! With the conclusion of acquiring and analyzing MAP data, and the development of SLO’s, now it is time to begin planning our important data conversations and goal setting with students. Last year’s MAP and TE-21 student goals were the focus of the student data conversations and incentives. Tying incentives and rewards to our students meeting and exceeding their goals is a great way to foster student motivation. If you would like to serve on this year’s student recognition team, please send me an email expressing interest. Below you will find a link to a survey asking for your input on what goals and data you would like student’s goals to be set on. Your input is important to this process so please be sure to participate.
RISE Report from Colin
Thank you to those who are keeping up with encouragement and documentation for the two RISE values on which we have focused thus far. We are presenting the challenge and the character trait to the students, but none of us on the leadership team take for granted the hard work this requires form the teachers. I am thankful for your diligence, patience, and perseverance when it comes to hosting lunch detentions, making phone calls, documenting, and following up with students.
In September, our focus was the “S” (Show Responsibility) with specific attention to being on time to class. That will continue to be important and worth documenting all year. Students serve after school detention on Thursdays for being tardy to school, but also for accruing 5 tardies to class during the day. If a student shows up to class late without a pass, please do not send them in search of a pass. Instead, simply let them know you have to put it in the system and then document it. So please continue to document on the google form or simply email me and I will add it for you. You all have done so well with this and for that, I am appreciative.
In October, we focused on the “I” (Invest in Yourself) with specific attention on completing all assignments. Last Friday’s reward day was a simple recognition of students doing just that, but the important part going forward is to maintain that academic focus and student accountability. We have put the Working Wednesday in place to enable us to make that happen.
In November, we will focus on the “E” (Encourage Others). We will incorporate the traits: be a positive influence, make someone smile, and root for others. Students will write positive notes to each other and about each other. These encouraging messages will be displayed on an encouragement wall in the school and incorporated into the morning announcements. I will screen the notes and be in charge of what goes on the wall.
Thank you for the huge part you play in our RISE culture!
Words from Wendy
In Feedback: The Hinge that Joins Teaching and Learning (2012), Jane Pollock notes that neurologist Judy Willis, who became a middle school teacher to put into practice what she knew about the brain and students, understands learning and brain pathways: “The more ways the material to be learned is introduced to the brain and reviewed, the more dendritic pathways of access will be created (p. 4).” Specifically, a “learner needs to use multiple ways to hold and manipulate new information in order to activate previously stored loops of knowledge and increase the likelihood that the information will be stored in long-term memory.” Pollock states that students need more opportunities to work with strategies in an environment that supports correction, elaboration and timely feedback so that they may deepen and sharpen their understanding of their own knowledge (p. 54-55). In other words, Pollock believes that teachers can actively plan for students to learn better.
J. Pollock and R. Marzano were part of a think-tank together, and along with D. J. Pickering, wrote Classroom instruction that works: Research-based strategies for increasing student achievement (2001). Many teachers are familiar with Marzano’s work, and hopefully with the Marzano Evaluation Model, which includes four domains shown to correlate with student academic achievement. These four domains include questions such as follows:
#1: What will I do to establish and communicate learning goals, track student progress, and celebrate success?
#2: What will I do to help students effectively interact with new knowledge?
#3: What will I do to help student practice and deepen their understanding of new knowledge?
#8: What will I do to establish and maintain effective relationships with students?
#9: What will I do to communicate high expectations for all students?
By 2011, over 300 experimental/control studies had been conducted on the Marzano Evaluation Model, and these studies represent 14,000 students, 300 teachers, across 38 schools in 14 districts. Per Marzano (2011), the average effect size for strategies addressed in the studies was .42, with some studies reporting effect sizes of 2.00 and higher. This “average effect size of .42 is associated with a 16 percentile point gain in student achievement. Stated differently: on the average, when teachers use the classroom strategies and behaviors in the Marzano Evaluation Model, their typical student achievement increased by 16 percentile points. However, great gains (i.e., those associated with an effect size of 2.00) can be realized if specific strategies are use in specific ways.”
One such strategy, and the one with the largest percentile gain (45%) and effect size (1.61%), is helping students identify similarities and differences, or in other words, map and structure a compare and contrast model.
With such a large effect size from one simple strategy, it makes sense to find ways that we can incorporate this thinking process at Liberty Middle School, and to that end, I would like to offer this thinking map on Comparing: Describe How Things are the Same and Different from Jane Pollock’s “Primer on Thinking Skills.” I encourage teachers to take any two items with similarities and differences in their classroom, and lead students through these four steps without letting them see the steps in advance. In the last two or three weeks, I’ve used imaginary mayonnaise products, and hard and softcover books on the same subject, to teach this process, so the choices are endless.
Ask students to describe the steps to a comparison of any two items, and note them at the board in this order. Help guide them when they become “stuck.”
1. Select items to compare
2. Select characteristics on which you want to base your comparison of the items
3. Explain how the items are similar and different with respect to the characteristics
4. Summarize your findings and draw useful conclusions
Once you have students “think through” how they compare/contrast any two items, ask them to compare two recent science labs, essays, etc. from your class using the following handout, which I recently discovered in the Collections textbook and then adapted (feel free to adapt for your discipline). Notice how the characteristics can be endless, and the items to compare at the top can be increased to push rigor. This literacy method can be incorporated in elementary school or college—it is a transferable skill with a large effect.
Give it a try, or if you like, ask me to come in and I’ll lead them through the thinking process and the structure. Taking 15 minutes to deepen this strategy and make it applicable across disciplines (and the SC Ready) can have innumerable benefits. I’d be interested to know how it goes.
http://www.marzanoevaluation.com/files/Research_Base_and_Validation_Studies_Marzano_Evaluation_Model.pdf
Upcoming Dates
November 6
Basketball @ Dacusville
November 7
District PD after school
Student Council District Five Rally - Riverside High - G'ville
November 8
Job Shadowing - 7th grade
November 10
FCA - Gym - 7:30 a.m.
Veterans' Day Program - 1:30
Dance
November 13
Basketball Team Parent Meeting - 5:30
November 14
School Level PD during Planning
ELA Teachers Visit Palmetto Middle
Basketball Scrimmage @ RC Edwards
November 15
Lisa - Principal Induction
November 16
Induction Meetings
Lisa - Principal Induction
November 17
FCA - Gym - 7:30 a.m.
November 18
Basketball @ Dacusville - 9:00 a.m.
November 20
Fire Drill
Basketball - HOME - Honea Path
November 21
District PD after school
November 22 - 24
HOLIDAY
November 28
School Level PD during Planning