Academic Office Newsletter
February 2023
Phenomenal Educators,
As we move into February, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the hard days that often come with this time of year. This season of the school year is jammed packed with testing, it's cold, and little sun. It can be easy to feel bogged down at this time of the year.
But I want to remind you, like all things in life, that this is just a season in the education world. Pike educators are amazing individuals who make an astounding impact on the lives of our community and families. I couldn't imagine doing this work with any other people. Pike educators are resilient and extraordinary folk.
Thank you for encouraging others during these hard days. You never know when your positive interactions with others will give you the courage to try something new and experience growth. It happens daily in our school district and needs to be well known. As always, thank you for what you do and know you are appreciated. Until next month...
Stay great,
Dr. Larry Huff
We are listening: Reducing the numbers of assessments
As educators, we must strive to ensure our students receive a high-quality and well-rounded education. This includes not overburdening all with unnecessary assessments. While assessments are necessary to help us evaluate student progress, many teachers feel that taking too many can detract from instruction and disrupt the learning flow.
We must continue advocating for our students and teachers by minimizing testing and creating meaningful learning experiences instead. By working together to reduce assessment levels and create an environment focused on cultivating a passion for learning, we can improve student outcomes in Pike Township. This type of change will lead to better educational opportunities for all.
We look forward to receiving input from teachers and administrators on what assessments to stay and go in Pike Township. Let's work together toward reducing assessment overload so our students can benefit from meaningful learning experiences.
Dr. Larry Huff
Elementary Specialist Update
Activities for Independent Reading Time
“Reading is the gateway for children that makes all other learning possible.”
Barack Obama
While conducting a small guided reading group with the students, the rest of the class can work on independent reading activities at their desks or centers.“Centers/stations during independent reading time must be focused on reading, writing, listening and speaking, with a meaningful goal. Effective centers include a form of student accountability,” according to the Pike Reading Framework Guidance document. When students read independently, it can increase achievement and improve their comprehension, fluency, and vocabulary. Students can complete independent reading activities using digital books and assignments. These additional grades K - 2 activities and grades 3-5 activities can be used during the literacy block time. Independent reading can motivate children to discover the love of reading that can last a lifetime!
Secondary Literacy Update
I Do, We Do, You Do
A common buzz phrase in education is “gradual release of responsibility” and “student-centered instruction,” but what do these mean? As we are working with our students, we need to be mindful of the fact that not all students learn the same way. The gradual release of responsibility model (or I Do, We Do, You Do) is designed to move from a teacher-centered classroom to student-centered classroom. Teachers begin by modeling their thinking as they work through skills students need to learn (I Do). The next step invites students into their thinking followed by collaborative learning (We Do) ending with independent practice (You Do). This model of instruction can be used in any classroom and any content area. Review this document to learn additional information about what happens at each stage.Pike STEM Update
It’s that time of year again! The “E” in STEM will take center stage the week of February 19th, as National Engineers Week kicks off! This is a great opportunity to celebrate how engineers make a difference in our world, to highlight the vast career opportunities that exist in the field, and to engage students in the engineering design process. Additionally, embedded in this celebration is “Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day on February 23rd.” There are so many opportunities to create STEM identities in students during this time! Here are just a few ideas:
Invite an engineer into your classroom (in-person or virtual) to talk about their career, their educational path, and their STEM mindset
Allow students to brainstorm problems that exist in our community and then work on engineering a prototype to find a solution
Expose students to a variety of different engineers (e.g. civil, chemical, mechanical, electrical, industrial, etc.) and have students research the type of work that is done by each
Display pictures/video of the 7 Wonders of the Engineering World (The International Space Station, The Golden Gate Bridge, The Channel Tunnel, Burj Khalifa, The Great Wall of China, Hoover Dam, The Millau Viaduct) and explore each structure
Give opportunities to students to make, create, build, design, tinker, fail, succeed, and be engineers!
Visit the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) site for suggested lesson and activities
Whatever you do, make it fun! Engineering is all about hands-on, minds-on learning! This week should be an exciting time for you and your students!
Elementary Math
Warming up our math brains!
When it comes to exercising, an important step in the process is warming up our muscles through stretching or other less rigorous activities. But, are we taking the time to warm-up our math minds before a math lesson? It’s crucial that we take a few minutes (5-10) at the start of our math block to provide opportunities for our students to warm-up their math muscles and get ready for more cognitive tasks as the lesson develops. In Reveal, they do this through the daily routines (Number Routines and Sense Making Routines) at the start at each lesson. In addition to getting our math muscles warmed up, these routines also provide support in the development of flexibility with numbers, fluency with operations, and sense-making as a foundation for problem solving. They are low-floor and high-ceiling activities that deliver immediate opportunities for success experiences and help build a positive classroom culture where kids are eager to participate. In addition to the routines found in our Reveal lessons, another great resource to help with the “warming up” process is this folder full of number work activities that are engaging, fun and ready to go! During these warm-ups, the main thing to remember is to place the emphasis and focus on the process and strategies for solving the problems and to cultivate and refine the neural pathways in their brains.Secondary Math
Throughout the year, we have been working with equity facilitators to learn more about how the amygdala helps to protect us from physical or social threats. When the amygdala is triggered, our brains are filled with cortisol and the natural fight, flight, freeze, or appease response takes over. (Hammond, 40). The reason this is important to consider in math is that many students experience math anxiety. When they begin to think about math tests, or even math class, many students have reported feeling frustrated, nervous, and even unable to think. These feelings are reinforced by low grades, disappointed adults, and the general message that mistakes in math are bad. The unfortunate thing about math anxiety is that, when left unrecognized, these feelings become stronger and come on much more quickly. It takes years to train our brains that math is not really a threat. Students (and adults) with math anxiety have lower achievement scores, tend to be more disruptive, and tend to miss class more often. Although we cannot fix this phenomena, we can definitely help students to feel less anxious about math. A few suggestions are as follows:
Incorporate humor and laughter during math instruction
Encourage students to write about and name their feelings about math regularly
Increase your wait time after questions (at least 3 seconds…literally count to yourself… one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand)
Emphasize the learning process and understanding of underlying math concepts
Regularly use tasks that allow for multiple entry points and multiple solution pathways
English Language Learner Update
Oral language acquisition is important to learning how and to improve reading and writing. Speaking and listening activities are essential to language learning, yet, English learners often speak very little in classrooms about academic topics. English learners need authentic reasons to use oral language which is why the WIDA English Language Development (ELD) Framework, 2020 edition promotes a functional approach to language learning as one of the four big ideas in the ELD framework. Students often do side-by-side activities meant to be collaborative - that is, they can complete their parts of the assigned “collaborative” task with little to no reason to interact academically with other students. Collaborative activities need to be designed in such a way that students cannot complete them without collaborating with others.
Try using structured activities to increase academic interaction among students during content learning: Activites to Foster Oral Interaction. Be sure to provide adequate support and scaffolds such as sentence frames, word banks, and modeling of the task so that all levels of ELLs can have success.
Technology Update
DEI Coordinator Updates
In his book What Happened to You?, Dr. Bruce Perry shares that our brains are organized to act and feel before we think. “Our life experiences shape the way key systems in our brain organize and function. So each of us sees and uniquely understands the world (p.29).” Each of us creates a unique worldview shaped by our life experiences (Winfrey & Perry, 2021, p.29). Culture is the software that informs the brain and shapes our worldview. As educators, we must understand that our students do not and will not always view situations as we do. We have to become curious instead of leaning on our assumptions.
For example, a student who refuses to do work may appear angry. However, anger may not be what they are feeling. They may feel something else, and it is showing up as anger. In Brené Brown’s book Atlas of the Heart (2021), she details how anger is a secondary emotion. Here are two diagrams that can be used to think about what is behind anger: Behind Anger. Try to apply this to yourself as well as your students. When the student is not completing work, a teacher may appear angry when something else is happening. In both situations, whatever feelings show up are guided by our culture, especially our deep cultural values.
We can dig even deeper into our curiosity and begin understanding the neuroscience behind our interactions with each other. The link below is Zaretta Hammon’s excerpt from her book Culturally Relevant Teaching and the Brain. She details how the nervous system is an extension of the other brain structures (p. 44). The nervous system is the precursor for learning.
Special Education Department Update
Why Multisensory teaching is important?
In the world of exceptional learning, the term “multisensory approach” has long been known to be the best way to target reading. Over the past few years, we have seen this type of instruction come to the forefront as a best practice for all students, not just students with disabilities. “’Multisensory teaching is not lights, camera, action,’ as one teacher has said. Multisensory teaching and learning is a form of direct instruction of the phonologic, morphemic, semantic and syntactic layers of language. Multisensory strategies simultaneously involve visual, auditory, tactile-kinesthetic sensory systems, and/or articulatory-motor components while linking listening, speaking, reading and writing; this means it directly involves students in seeing, hearing, saying and writing during instruction.” (Birsh, J. (2019). What is multisensory structured language? Perspectives on Language and Literacy, 13.)
Multisensory teaching can extend into other curricular areas as well. For instance, in math, using manipulatives to show 1:1 correspondence or math fact mastery are just a couple of examples of how this approach could be expanded. The sky is the limit when building scaffolds for understanding, especially when it comes to our students with disabilities.
In Pike, we have been utilizing the Sonday System for reading for our students who are identified with a specific learning disability in reading. This approach or program, utilizes strategies from Orton Gillingham as a way to teach reading systematically with a multisensory approach. The structure of the lesson has the sensory components built in which is important as it relates to fidelity of instruction. A Sonday System 1 kit has been allocated to every resource teacher at the elementary level. Additionally, the middle schools should have Sonday System 2 kits and at least 1 – System 1 kit. If you have a kit and need to be trained on how to utilize the system, please reach out to Jennifer Culhan, Asst. Director of Exceptional Learners, jculhan@pike.k12.in.us.
Mastery Connect Update
Thank you for providing feedback on Mastery Connect. We are thoroughly reading all of it and working to ensure it is a valuable tool for all teachers to assess students and use the data to make informed decisions about instruction. This is going to take time, so your patience, understanding, and flexibility is greatly appreciated.
- The questions on the common assessment are not designed to match the content in the HMH stories, rather they’re designed to address the standards that are listed as priority in the Scope & Sequence maps. We are aware that in some instances, the questions were not properly aligned. We are working with Mastery Connect to fix this.
- The goal of this assessment is to gauge student progress and measure students’ mastery of specific standards. As such, some passages that are used may be of little interest to students and they may even not have background knowledge on the content of the passage. That is the unfortunate nature of assessments. This is where your highly skilled teaching comes in. As you teach students skills and strategies, the goal is for them to be able to transfer those skills and strategies to any text.
- There may be ways a question is written/asked on the common assessment that does not mimic the way you teach it. Therefore, it is important to expose to students to multiple ways of learning content, so that when asked to demonstrate their understanding on an assessment, they are able to do so. This includes formatting, various fonts, and vocabulary that is used to ask questions.
- Teachers have the ability to turn on text to speech accommodations for individual students whose IEP/ILP calls for it. Refer to Audrey Cope’s tutorials if you need assistance on how to do this.
The Academic Office looks forward to obtaining teacher input on these assessments and on next year’s assessment calendar. Be on the lookout for an opportunity to participate in the 2023-2024 assessment committee. Details and information will be forthcoming. In the meantime, please adhere to the dates for administering and grading the common assessments and continue to provide feedback. Your voice and expertise is valued.