Maude Saunders Newsletter
Week of December 16, 2019
At Maude Saunders, we are...
One School
One Team
with One Mission:
EXCELLENCE A+
Goals:
- Have a positive mindset each day toward students, parents, & staff.
- Build team efficacy through collaboration.
- Create a school culture reflecting excellence in ourselves and our students.
- Build cognitive capacity in our students through high expectations.
Mission & Vision:
To be a place where all students succeed and achieve to their maximum potential with a curriculum that is a dynamic response to each student's needs.
Vision:
Maude Saunders Elementary School will create and sustain a school climate that encourages student success.
In the Spotlight
Thought for the Week
Differentiated Accountability: We are proudly educating 542 future leaders.
Preventing and Solving Discipline Problems - We will be exploring behavioral strategies each week, including how to deal with challenging students.
Summaries for Chapters 2-4 will be sent through email through the Christmas Break.
5 Components:
- Positive teacher-student relationships
- Clearly defined parameters of acceptable student behaviors
- Monitoring skills
- Consequences
- Strong content instruction
Let's continue to be consistent with our classroom procedures and school norms so we can continue to reduce referrals.
INSTRUCTIONAL FOCUS - Productive Struggle
Productive Struggle for All
December 13, 2018 | Volume 14 | Issue 11
Productive Struggle Is a Learner's Sweet Spot
Barbara R. Blackburn
Rigor is a buzzword in today's educational circles, but there are many misunderstandings about the concept. Although rigor means having high expectations for all students, those expectations must be accompanied by appropriate support. Student success occurs when you create an instructional environment that sets high expectations for each student and provides scaffolding without offering excessive help. The key is to incorporate productive struggle.
Productive struggle is what I call the "sweet spot" in between scaffolding and support. Rather than immediately helping students at the first sign of trouble, we should allow them to work through struggles independently before we offer assistance. That may sound counterintuitive, since many of us assume that helping students learn means protecting them from negative feelings of frustration. But for students to become independent learners, they must learn to persist in the face of challenge.
This does not mean you teach a standard lesson and allow students to struggle throughout. I recommend providing specific opportunities for productive struggle as students build their skills. For a struggle to qualify as productive, it should:
- Challenge the specific weaknesses of the student or small group rather than overwhelm them.
- Occur within challenging activities and assignments.
- Be productive rather than frustrating. For example, if you want to learn to play tennis, you will struggle appropriately playing a slightly superior coach who challenges you rather than playing someone completely out of your league.
- Let students use metacognitive reflections to process their thinking. With metacognitive reflections, students think about how they learn in addition to what they learn.
Productive struggle means more than simply giving a student "hard work" and leaving them alone to struggle. It is a learning opportunity that requires a teacher to create, facilitate, and monitor the process, especially as students are learning how to struggle productively.
For complete article see: http://www.ascd.org/ascd-express/vol14/num11/productive-struggle-is-a-learners-sweet-spot.aspx
Top 10 Achievement Boosters For Students ©2016 Eric Jensen
8. NITTY-GRITTY
WHAT THIS MEANS: Fostering grit, persistence and dealing w/ failure are known success-builders. The success of two best-selling authors (Carol Dweck with Mindset and Paul Chance with How Children Succeed) has invited all of to think more deeply about the nature of mindsets for school and life. The core understanding here is a critical one because the perception is that these traits are about only succeeding. Actually they are as much about how we deal with failure.
HOW TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN: When students fail or struggle, here’s what not to do. Don’t make excuses, don’t bless them (“Bless his heart; he’s just not cut out for math”) and don’t blame it on luck, genetics or home situation. Avoid giving ‘individual-orientated personal praise’ such as, ‘I’m proud of you.’ When you do that, it is unclear that success is due to. Is it genes, personal attributes, or luck?
Now, here is what TO DO. Instead, give praise focused on the process required for success such as the student’s effort or strategy. Say, “Seems like you really tried hard, which is a good way to get it done on time.” When students fail or struggle, here’s what you say, “We are all in this for the long haul and this was just a glitch. Yes, it is disappointing. But let’s regroup, figure out a new plan and jump back in with a big effort.”
There are many ways to build grit. Create a common vocabulary for it. Tell kids what it is, and what it is not. “Doing THAT shows me a lot of grit!” Reinforce it every time you see a student pushing through obstacles. “I love the way you’re being so gritty with that task.” Use reflection when “grit drops.”
How? You help them connect their values to the task to infuse new energy and effort for success. Give students a 10-minute writing assignment about their own values and how they apply to their work. This can also be done verbally or in writing. Tell stories of the results of “grit in action.” Students do better after they connect values with their work. Finally, give them a task that is big enough, complex enough or time-consuming enough to even have a chance to develop and show grit.
Here’s how one high-performing teachers introduces grit. He begins the grit lesson by holding a Superball and an egg. You can guess where this lesson will go. He says to the class, “Who are you? An egg or a Superball? Now, what happens when an egg hits an obstacle? Now, what happens when a Superball hits an obstacle? ‘It bounces back harder, they shout out.’ He throws the Superball up against the wall and catches the bounce back a few times. So what happens when an egg hits an obstacle? The class shouts out, ‘It goes splat!’
The teacher says, ‘Yes!’ and to prove it, he throws a few eggs up against the wall. The splatter goes everywhere but the kids understand.
The Superball people work through challenges, never give up, and keep trying different strategies. If you want to succeed in this world, you will need to be a Superball, not an egg.
From the desk of our own Krisy Spence
As a Title 1 school, we create and implement a plan for assisting students in transition to kindergarten and middle school. Each May, our school provides a “preview” to area VPK students who will be coming to kindergarten. These future Little Warriors and their family are invited to visit Kindergarten classrooms and tour the school in order to inform parents about academic requirements and ease the anxiety of starting “big” school. A Kindergarten orientation is also held for all incoming students during pre-planning. Our fifth graders tour Walton Middle School and also receive an overview from the middle school Guidance Counselor in the Spring. If you have ideas for other ways we can help our students transition, please share with me!
MATH TIPS from Pam Lathinghouse
Have you explored the Great Minds website lately? This site contains our Eureka Math curriculum and videos that will help you better understand upcoming lessons and strategies. Ms. Krisy Spence has the log-in information for www.greatminds.org. Once there, you can select Eureka Basic Curriculum Files and Teach Eureka (Digital Suite) for lessons and videos that support your instruction. Also, as we approach the end of this semester, now is a good time to take a look at your pacing guide and determine goals for next semester. Please let me know if you have questions or need assistance!
Important Information
- Last Week Before Christmas Break: I know this is going to be a week filled with excitement, but let's make sure we stay consistent with our school-wide expectations (hallway norms, classroom norms, cafeteria norms, etc...). Let's also remember that every instructional minute counts. We can have fun and still make a positive impact on student learning.
- Possible Retention Letters: I will be emailing these out this week so you can prepare them to go out with report cards in January. We will discuss this further in our upcoming grade level data chats.
- House Points: Please continue to award points for students.
- Individual Data Chats: Mr. Johnson and I will be scheduling Individual Data Chats in the next few weeks. I encourage you to go ahead and share your individual data with your grade levels and identify patterns and trends that can be addressed during your PLC. Please let Mr. Johnson and myself know how we can support you in this process.
- Individual Student Goal Setting: Please complete K-12 Lift Student Goal Sheets and make sure you document in your lesson plans.
- Final Evaluations: Let's begin our final evaluations in January. I want to have ALL evaluations complete by the end of April 2020 (before testing).
- Review Proposed Standards: In a Just Read, Florida! presentation yesterday, they boiled the most significant proposed changes in the new standards to the items listed below. Please review the standards and submit feedback through this link: https://www.floridastandardsreview.org/
- Skyward: Anyone that has submitted TDE into Skyward must upload an attachment (agenda, email requesting you attend, etc.). If you did not do this, please go back and upload your attachment. NOTE: You do NOT have to submit TDE into Skyward for trainings we have on our campus. This was just clarified at my Principals' Meeting. So for our Data Chats, you do NOT have to upload an attachment.
- Comp Time: Please do NOT enter comp time for Faculty Meetings. Loveta will enter Faculty Meeting Comp Time into Skyward for all that attend. If you leave early, make sure you write the time you leave by your name. Also, please remember that comp time must be pre-approved. For parent meetings, please upload an attachment to indicate the time-frame in which the conference was held.
- Lesson Plans: Please make sure your lesson plans are on your desk and accessible each day. I may need to refer to them when doing a walk-through.
- FOCUS: Please keep your grades updated and make sure your grades are standards-based and you have the correct number of grades per the SPP.
- Parent Communication: How are the positive phone calls home progressing?
- Safety: Please keep all classroom doors locked.
- Attendance: Attendance should be completed by 8:30 a.m.
- Transportation Notes: Please make sure these are sent to the front office no later than 8:30 a.m. Also, make sure transportation notes are picked up from your box before dismissal.
Calendar Additions:
NOTE: Please let Mrs. Bonnie know if you have events that need to be added to the master calendar. Ms. Bonnie will begin this week entering what we have on the master calendar so far.