CPUMS
Week of May 1
Quotation:"The world's favorite season is spring, all things seem possible in May."-Edwin Way Teale
Newsela Summer Reading Clubs & Barnes and Noble
Many of you are using NEWSELA in your classroom. It is a great resource. You may have received this same email, but I thought it was worth sharing with you. It is important to note the due date is MAY 8. If you would like help getting your students enrolled just let me know.
"Not sure how to get students reading over the summer? We’ve got you covered. The school year may be ending, but your students can still access Newsela on their own all summer long.
Newsela Summer Reading Clubs are an easy way to encourage students to read during the summer, keeping their reading skills sharp and exploring topics that actually interest them. There are 12 clubs for students to choose from. They run the gamut from Animals to Technology, and from Sports to Myths & Legends. The best part? Teachers don’t have to do a thing.
Here’s How Your School Can Participate…
Students can join clubs at any time during the summer and read at their own pace, but only students who are registered for Newsela before May 8 are eligible. Make sure your students have signed up for a free Newsela account right away so they can join a reading club!
Every Newsela teacher who has students in a class will receive instructions for students to join summer reading club soon!"
1st - 6th-grade students have an opportunity to earn a free book from Barnes and Noble for summer reading. Information here.
Ten Strategies for Creating a Classroom Culture of High Expectations-Strategy 6
The next few weeks I am going to share an article with you on creating a culture of learning. The article was written by Myra Cloer Reynolds of SREB.
Strategy Six
The student as worker — implement instructional activities that actively engage students.
The best motivational tool for students is personal involvement in something that produces a clear result and is interesting to them. This is why students spend hours on video games, skateboarding or playing sports — even those requiring thinking, risk and perhaps personal injury. Learning can be interesting and can produce a clear, positive result. Unfortunately, instructional planners sometimes ignore this reality or intentionally plan for the majority of the student’s classroom time to be passive with the teacher in control and onstage. This is boring and hypocritical. The student is held accountable for performance and yet has few opportunities to perform. The direct relationship between what is done in class and what is expected on the test is at best vague to students — and at worst, resented by them. Ask them — they will affirm this. A desirable ratio of teacher-talk time to student-talk time is one to three. Letting a class day end without actively engaging each student in producing some thought, paper or product of his/her own should be avoided at all times. This does not mean copying the teacher’s notes from overhead transparencies. Teachers must ask thoughtful questions, require students to think, listen to students, value questions more than answers, and demonstrate that they value thinking more than talking. These are ways to insist that every student be engaged.
There are many good ways to keep students actively engaged, including:
- planning for and expecting writing of more than one page each week
- reading with and to students
- using reading as the primary homework activity
- using a variety of written and reading sources for every unit of instruction
- using cooperative and project-based learning that requires students to develop group process, time management, planning and communication skills along with content mastery
Calendar
Monday 5/1/17
- Meetings with Mrs. Burkhart and Mr. Winterhof
- Big Picture Meeting at Intermediate
- Grade level task meetings
Tuesday, 5/2/17
- Work with teachers and students
Wednesday, 5/3/17
- Data teams 7:30
- Work with teachers and students
- Working with students and staff
- Grade Level team learning meetings
- Working with students and staff
- IC meeting-PM
- If you would like to see my Google calendar search my name while in Google Calendar.