Tharptown Elementary School
September 16 - September 20
Each Day Brings New Opportunities
You have the ability to make each day the BEST day. You have the choice to be better than you were the day before. Your willingness and desire to become better shows up in your decisions, actions, and attitudes.
It is easy to become complacent and be satisfied with where you are. As Jim Collins states in his book, Good to Great, "Good is the enemy of great." Why? He explains that "When we have good schools, businesses, and good government, we are prone to accept that level of quality as sufficient." Are you satisfied with where you are? Are you okay with being good...not great? Do you want to be better tomorrow than you were today?
To create a better school, we have to create a better US! What if we all committed to be better each day than we were the day before? How would our students benefit if we improved a little each day? How would the success of our school improve if every member of our staff determined to be better today than they were the day before?
Just remember, there is no better day than TODAY to be the best YOU! You deserve it, your family deserves, and your students deserve it!
How About a Little Creativity
The Purpose of Feedback
With any learning activity, there must be feedback to students. Without feedback, students have no idea how they are doing. They don't know if they are on the right track or way off base. They don't know if they are meeting the teacher's expectations or achieving the learning goals that have been set for them.
I was thrilled to see the students in Mrs. Ward's class so excited and involved in a game of Kahoot last week. Kahoot is an online learning tool that can also be used as formative assessment. Students were highly engaged in this activity and very competitive with each other. Although this learning activity was great, the one thing I especially noticed was the feedback that was given to students. At the end of each question, Mrs. Ward provided the instant feedback that the students needed to evaluate their understanding. She asked students to explain their answers and had them share why their answers were either right or wrong. Students had to defend why they picked a particular answer and were asked to share the "whys" and "hows" of their answers. This was a great opportunity for students to have fun while at the same time, think critically.
Learning and Movement
While walking down the halls last week, I heard the wonderful "sound" of learning taking place. After all, learning is not always quiet! I stepped into Mrs. Campbell's room to see what was going on with her students. The students were involved in an interactive math lesson where they were moving, singing, talking, and making motions. They were actively engaged in their learning. So how important is movement to learning?
Brain scans show that children learn best when they are actually moving and learning at the same time. “The more the learners used learning activities with movement, the higher their academic achievements, especially with the following activities: sustained movement-assisted learning activities; physical contact with the learned environment; use of visual and movement modeling; and socio-kinesthetic interaction” (Shoval, 2011, p. 462).
“Movement is an exterior stimulus, and as long as the learner is engaged in his or her learning task, the movement indicates that the learner’s attention is directed toward what is being learned. When attention is purely mental (interior) the activity becomes very difficult to sustain, because the nerve and muscle systems are inactive” (Shoval, 2011, p. 456-457). Shovel also explains that if we are passive learners, then we are more likely to “ignore the on-going learning process” (Shoval, 2011, p. 459) even if it is by mistake (minds tend to wander). On the other hand, by incorporating movement activities, the learner is essentially forced to engage in the learning process unless he/she chooses not to, making engagement observable (Shoval 2011).
I encourage you to look for ways to connect learning activities with movement. Get the students out of their seats and use a variety of senses to engage the students in their learning!
Shoval, E. (2011). Using mindful movement in cooperative learning while learning about angles. Instructional Science, 39(4), 453-466. doi:10.1007/s11251-010-9137-2.
Providing Intervention
Sti-PD
Just a reminder...
September 19 will be the last day to access Chalkable PD. On September 20 there will be no access into Chalkable PD as that information is to be pulled into PowerSchool PL.
- Teachers need to make sure their email address is correct in Chalkable.
- Username and passwords that are used in Chalkable may not transfer over to PowerSchool PL and the email address is very important.
- Teachers can go into their profile to update their email address.
- 7 years of PD history is being pulled over from Chalkable PD.
- If teachers want their entire training history, they need to print that out as only the most recent 7 years will be pulled in.
- Teachers may want to print it off anyway just to be on the safe side.
Correct Attendance
Upcoming Events This Week
Monday, September 16
- No known activities
Tuesday, September 17
- Ricardo DonAlex with Innovative Financial Services - will be here to meet with teachers. He will be set up in small office in the main building.
Wednesday, September 18
- AEA Representative - will be here to meet with all teachers. She will be set up in the small office in the main building. Please plan to meet with her during your planning time.
Thursday, September 19
- Parent Involvement Night - TES Cafeteria - 6:00 p.m. - All faculty please plan to attend this event.
Friday, September 20
- Grandparents Day - 12:15 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
- Deadline to sign up for AirEvac
- Deadline for saving all documentation in STI-PD